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REPORT 


OF    THE 


COMMISSION 


ON 


AMENDED  ORTHOGRAPHY, 


AUTHORIZED  BY  THE 


LEGISLATIVE  OF  PENNSYLVANIA 


APPOINTED  BY  GOVERNOR  BEAVER,  OCT.  24,  1887. 


REPORT  MADE  APRIL  8,  1889. 


HAKRISBUKG : 

EDWIN    K.    MEYERS,    STATE    PRINTER. 

1889. 


Pennsylvania  Commission  on  Amended  Orthography, 


Concurrent  Resolution  of  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives. 

'•  Resolved  (if  the  Senate  concur),  That  the  Governor  be  and  is 
hereby  authorized  to  appoint  a  commission  consisting  of  six  compe- 
tent persons  who  shall  examine  as  to  the  propriety  of  adopting  an 
amended  orthography  of  the  public  documents  hereafter  to  be  printed, 
and  how  far  such  amended  orthography  may  with  propriety  be  adopted, 
and  report  thereon  to  the  next  session  of  the  General  Assembly : 
Provided,  That  such  commission  shall  receive  no  compensation  for 
its  services." 

Passed  March  3 1,1887. 

Approved  April  16,  1887,  by  Governor  Beaver. 

Commission  appointed  October  24,  1887. 

F.  A.  MARCH,  LL.  D.  (Princeton,  Amherst),  L.  H.  D.  (Columbia), 
Professor  of  English  in  Lafayette  College,  Ex-President  of 
the  American  Philological  Association,  Chairman. 
THOMAS  CHASE,  LL.  D.  (Harvard),  Ex  President  of  Haverford 
College,  Member  of  the  American  Committee  of  Revision  of 
the  New  Testament. 

Kev.  H.  L.  WAYLAND,  D.  D.  (Brown),  Ex- President  of  Frank- 
lin College,  editor  of  the  "  National  Baptist^  1420  Chestnut 
street*  Philadelphia. 

Hon.  JAMES  W.  WALK,  A.  M.  (Lafayette),  M.  D.  (University  of 

Pa.),  House  of  Representatives  of  Pa.,  General  Secretary  of 

the  Society  for   Organizing   Charity,  1705   Chestnut  street, 

Philadelphia. 

ARTHUR  BIDDLE,  Esq.,  A.  B.  (Yale),  208  South  Fifth  street, 

Philadelphia. 

SAMUEL  A.  BOYLE,  Esq.,  Executive  Department,  Harrisburg^  Pa., 
Secretary. 


REPORT, 


To  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives  of  the  Commonwealth 

of  Pennsylvania : 

The  Commission  have  taken  for  granted  that  they  were  appointed 
in  view  of  facts  like  the  following  : 

1.  It  is  currently  stated  by  students  of  language  that  English  words 
as  commonly  spelt  contain  a  large  proportion  of  letters  which  are 
superfluous  and  misleading,  and  which   greatly  increase  the  cost  of 
writing  and  printing. 

2.  It  is  currently  stated  by  leading  educators  that  the  irregular 
spelling  of  the  English  language  causes  a  loss  of  two  years  of  th^ 
school  time  of  each  child,  and  is  a  main  cause  of  the  alarming  illite- 
racy of  our  people;  that  it  involves  an  expense  of  many  millions  of 
dollars  annually  for  teachers,  and  that  it  is  an  obstacle  in  many  other 
ways  to  the  progress  of  education  among  those  speaking  the  English 
language,  and  to  the  spread  of  the  language  among  other  nations. 

3.  Leading  educators,  among  whom  are  many  teachers  of  much 
practical  experience,  and  associations  of  learned  scholars  declare  it 
possible  to  improve  our  spelling  and  have  proposed  plans  of  improve- 
ment. 

•4.  The  amendment  of  German  spelling  by  the  German  government 
which  is  now  going  on,  attracts  the  attention  of  other  countries  and 
is  leading  to  improvements  in  the  spelling  of  other  languages  of 
Europe. 

The  Commission  has  asked  assistance  from  many  competent  per-* 
sons,  especially  superintendents  of  education,  and  from  the  American 
Philosophical  Society,  one  of  the  highest  authorities  upon  such  a  sub- 
ject, which  kindly  appointed  a  committee  of  its  own  learned  mem- 
bers to  assist  in  this  examination,  which  committee  has  made  a 
weighty  report,  herewith  submitted  as  Appendix  A.  With  such 
assistance  the  Commission  has  proceeded  to  examine  the  ortho- 
graphy used  in  the  public  documents  of  the  State,  and  to  inquire  how 
much  its  defects  increase  the  cost  of  the  public  printing  and  how  far 
they  are  an  impediment  to  the  acquisition  of  the  English  language 
and  to  education,  and  what  amendments  in  orthography  may  be 
easily  introduced  into  the  public  documents. 

First.  The  cost  of  printing  superfluous  and  misleading  letters. 
These  are  such  as  the  final  "ugh  "  in  a  though,"  the  final fc<  me"  of 
"  programme,"  the  final  u  ue  "  of  "  catalogue,"  the  final  "  e  "  of  gen- 
uine "  and  u  engine,"  the  final  ul"  in  "shall"  and  "will."  It  is 


found  that  the  removal  of  silent  e's  would  save  four  per  cent,  of  all 
the  letters  on  a  common  printed  page,  the  removal  of  one  consonant 
of  each  pair  of  duplicated  consonants  would  save  1.6  per  cent.  In 
the  New  Testament  printed  in  phonetic  types  in  1849  by  A.  J.  Ellis 
one  hundred  letters  and  spaces  are  represented  by  eighty-three.  As 
far  as  printing  and  paper  are  concerned,  a  six  dollar  book  would  be  thus 
reduced  to  five  dollars.  The  matter  of  six  volumes  of  the  public  docu- 
ments*would  cost  for  printing  as  much  as  five  now  do. 

The  report  of  the  Superintendent  of  Public  Printing  and  Binding 
for  the  year  ending  June  30, 1887,  shows  an  expenditure  of  $156,427.53. 
It  would  seem  that  the  reduction  in  this  bill  would  be  nearly  $20,000, 
after  making  allowance  for  the  lithographic  work  and  binding. 

If  we  trace  the  saving  of  money  to  the  people  from  the  use  of 
simple  spelling  in  all  printing  and  writing,  it  is  plainly  very  great. 
All  books  may  cost  one-sixth  less.  The  Encyclopaedia  Britannica 
would  make  twenty  volumes  instead  of  twenty-four,  and  cost  twenty- 
four  dollars  less.  The  newspapers  would  all  save  one  column  in  six. 
One-sixth  would  be  saved  in  all  writing,  in  the  manuscripts  of  books 
and  periodicals,  the  records  of  courts,  deeds,  wills  and  other  legal 
documents,  the  sermons  of  preachers,  the  books  of  merchants  and 
other  men  of  business,  and  correspondence  of  all  sorts.  In  the  year 
ending  June  30,  1886,  in  our  American  post  offices  there  were  sold 
1.147,906,400  two  cent  postage  stamps,  152,742, 250  stamped  envelopes; 
the  aggregate  of  all  stamps,  stamped  envelopes,  wrappers  and  cards 
was  2,342,364,871.  Adding  the  postage  of  Great  Britain,  it  is  likely 
that  three  billions  of  written  communications  in  English  passed  through 
the  mails  in  that  year.  One-sixth  of  the  labor  of  writing  is  well  worth 
saving. 

Second.  The  defects  in  English  orthography  constitute  an  impedi- 
ment in  education.  The  Honorable  J.  H.  Gladstone  has  carefully 
collected  the  statistics  of  the  English  schools,  and  he  finds  that  the 
average  time  allotted  to  spelling,  reading  and  dictation  is  32.2  per 
cent,  of  the  time  devoted  to  secular  instruction.  An  average  English 
child  spending  eight  years  in  school  spends  2,320  school  hours  in  these 
exercises.  He  concludes  that  720  hours  of  spelling  lessons  might  cer- 
tainly be  dispensed  with  if  our  spelling  were  simplified.  And,  fur- 
ther, upon  comparing  the  schools  of  England  with  those  of  Italy,  Ger- 
many, and  other  countries,  he  is  convinced  that  u  if  English  ortho- 
graphy represented  English  pronunciation  as  closely  as  the  Italian 
does,  at  least  half  the  time  and  expense  of  teaching  to  read  and  spell 
would  be  saved.  This  may  be  taken  as  1,200  hours  of  a  lifetime,  and 
and  as  more  than  half  a  million  of  money  [$2,500,000]  per  annum  for 
England  and  Wales  alone.  *  *  *  In  the  elementary  schools  of 
Italy,  though  the  aggregate  time  of  schooling  is  shorter,  the  children 
learn  much  about  the  laws  of  health,  and  domestic  and  social  economy. 
In  Germany  they  acquire  considerable  knowledge  of  literature  and 


science,  and  in  Holland  they  take  up  foreign  languages.  It  is  lament- 
able how  small  a  proportion  of  our  scholars  ever  advance  beyond  the 
mere  rudiments  of  learning;  a  circumstance  the  more  to  be  regretted 
as  they  will  have  to  compete  with  those  foreign  workmen  whose  early 
education  was  not  weighted  with  an  absurd  and  antiquated  orthog- 
raphy." 

The  Commission  has  requested  some  of  the  superintendents  of 
schools  in  this  Commonwealth  to  furnish  them  the  statistics  of  our 
schools.  They  agree  substantially  with  those  published  by  Mr. 
Gladstone.  The  views  of  the  Honorable  James  McAllister,  the  super- 
intendent of  the  schools  of  Philadelphia  are  contained  in  Appendix  A. 
A  communication  is  also  added  from  the  Hon.  W.  T.  Harris,  for  many 
years  superintendent  of  the  schools  in  St.  Louis,  in  which  he  gives  an 
account  of  an  improved  sytem  of  printing  reading  books  used  in  these 
schools,  by  which  time  is  gained  for  the  pupils  (Appendix  B). 

Third.  Considerations  in  favor  of  State  action  for  the  regulation  of 
spelling. 

The  facts  heretofore  stated  show  how  important  spelling  is,  and 
how  closely  connected  with  the  education  of  the  people.  A  govern- 
ment, then,  which  has  the  care  of  education  should  care  for  so  vital  a 
point  in  making  education  easy. 

Paternal  governments  like  that  of  Germany  direct  the  spelling  of 
school  books,  and  States  like  California  which  direct  the  preparation 
of  school  books,  may  do  the  same. 

The  documents  printed  by  the  State  of  Pennsylvania  are  important 
in  many  ways,  and  their  form  is  worthy  of  careful  attention  from  the 
Legislature. 

If  the  State  authority  were  given  to  any  orthography  it  would  have 
great  influence  as  an  example,  and  school  books  and  other  publica- 
tions would  be  led  to  follow  it. 

The  readers  of  the  State  documents  are  for  the  most  part  persons  of 
unusual  intelligence,  who  would  not  be  embarrassed  by  improvements 
in  spelling,  and  who  would  approve  a  reasonable  orthography. 

Fourth.  What  improvements  have  been  proposed  ? 

All  living  languages  are  changing  continually  in  pronunciation, 
and  the  spelling  naturally  changes  with  the  pronunciation.  Such 
changes  were  going  on  in  the  English  language  all  the  time  from 
King  Alfred  to  Dr.  Johnson.  Since  Johnson's  time,  the  early  re- 
formers most  interesting  to  Americans  are  Benjamin  Franklin  and 
Noah  Webster.  Some  account  of  their  action  may  be  found  in  the 
report  of  the  Committee  of  the  American  Philosophical  Society  in 
Appendix  A. 

Since  the  growth  of  the  modern  science  of  language  the  most  im- 
portant propositions  for  improvement  have  come  from  the  students  of 
language. 

A  revision  of  the  alphabet  is  necessary  for  perfect  scientific  spelling, 


8 

and  a  revision  was  made  by  the  American  Philological  Association 
in  1877. 

In  1883  a  scheme  of  partial  reform  was  jointly  approved  by  the 
Philological  Society,  of  England,  and  the  American  Philological  Asso- 
ciation and  recommended  for  immediate  use.  These  changes  were 
made  in  the  interest  of  etymological  and  historical  truth  and  are  con- 
fined to  words  which  are  not  much  disguised  for  general  readers. 
The  scheme  is  printed  in  Appendix  C. 

Many  propositions  have  been  made  for  adopting  part  of  these  changes, 
some  of  which  may  be  found  in  Appendix  C. 

Without  venturing  to  recommend  any  of  these,  or  any  orthographic 
novelties,  the  Commission  would  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  many 
words  are  spelt  in  two  ways  in  our  dictionaries,  and  that  it  is  therefore 
necessary  for  a  choice  to  be  made  between  the  different  spellings.  We 
find  "  honor"  and  "honour,"  "traveller"  and  "traveler,"  "comptroller" 
and  "  controller,"  and  hundreds  of  such  pairs.  In  these  words  one  way 
of  spelling  is  better  than  the  other  on  grounds  of  reason,  simpler,  more 
economical,  more  truthful  to  sound  etymology  and  scientific  law. 

The  Commission  respectfully  submits  that  the  regulation  of  the  or- 
thography of  the  public  documents  is  of  sufficient  importance  to  call 
for  legislative  action,  and  recommends  that  the  public  printer  be  in- 
stiucted,  whenever  variant  spellings  of  a  word  are  found  in  the  cur- 
rent dictionaries,  to  use  in  the  public  documents  the  simpler  form  which 
accords  with  the  amended  spelling  recommended  by  the  joint  action 
of  the  American  Philological  Association  and  the  English  Philological 
Society. 

FRANCIS  A.  MARCH, 
THOMAS  CHASE, 
H.  L.  WAYLAND, 
ARTHUR  BIDDLE, 
JAS.  W.  WALK, 
SAMUEL  A.  BOYLE. 


APPENDIX  A 


Report  of  the  Committee  Appointed  (January  6,  1888)  by  the  Ameri- 
can Philosophical  Society  to  Assist  the  Commission  on  Amended 
Orthografy:  Created  by  Virtue  of  a  Resolution  of  the  Legislature  of 
Pennsylvania. 

The  literature  of  the  subject  of  "  Spelling  Reform  "  is  already  ex- 
tensive, and,  for  its  purposes,  sufficiently  exhaustive.  The  most 
eminent  filologists  in  England  and  America  have  contributed  to  it. 
and  the  publisht  testimony  in  favor  of  reform  is  from  filologists,  lin- 
guists, scientists,  statesmen,  educators,  editors  and  literary  workers  in 
general. 

In  view  of  this,  your  committee  recognizes  that  there  are  practically 
no  new  facts  to  be  brought  out  to  strengthen  the  argument  on  either 
side.  What  it  aims  to  do,  then,  is  to  present,  in  a  logical  and  conclu- 
sive manner,  the  known  facts  in  the  case,  together  with  a  consensus 
of  opinions  drawn  from  high  sources,  in  so  far  as  they  illustrate  the 
points  at  issue. 

In  this  way.  your  committee  designs  to  review  the  whole  problem, 
so  that'  the  objective  point,  the  recommendation  of  the  State  Com- 
mission that  certain  simplified  spellings  be  employed  in  the  public 
documents,  can  be  intelligently  considered. 

1.  WHAT  is  SPELLING? — According  to  Worcester,  it  is  the  art  of 
"  forming  words  by  arranging  their  proper  letters  in  due  order."  But 
this  definition  is  as  loose,  and  therefore  unscientific,  on  the  one  hand, 
as  it  is  popularly  true  and  sufficient  on  the  other.  The  main  issfte  is 
bound  up  in  the  adjective  "  proper ;"  a  secondary  issue  is  in  the  word 
u  letters." 

To  dispose  of  the  latter,  it  need  only  be  remembered,  that  u  letters  " 
are  but  the  mechanical  devices  or  symbols  by  which  words  are  rep 
resented  to  the  eye.  Any  one  who  can  analyze  a  word  into  its  fon- 
etic  elements  can  spell  that  word  by  a  synthetic  recombining  those 
elements.  And  this,  in  the  truest  sense,  is  spelling;  for  the  spoken 
language  is  the  language,  while  the  written  language  is  merely  its 
mechanical  representation  to  the  eye. 

It  is  not  therefore,  primarily,  "  arranging  their  proper  letters  "  that 
constitutes  the  true  spelling  of  words,  but  the  proper  arranging  of 
their  component  sounds.  Just  so  far,  then,  as  the  successive  letters  of 
the  written  word  represent — and  exclusively  represent — those  succes- 
sive component  sounds  of  the  spoken  words,  just  so  far  will  they  be 
the  "proper  letters"  and  the  written  spelling  a  proper  spelling.  That 


10 

is,  in  true  spelling  every  symbol  should  have  but  one  sound,  and  every 
sound  but  one  symbol. 

2.  WHAT 'is  ENGLISH  SPELLING? — By  the  foregoing  amplified  defini 
tion,  it  is  evident  that  the  great  bulk  of  our  English  spelling  can  be 
go  called  only  by  courtesy — only  by  a  deference  to  a  usage  that  has 
itself  originally  deferred  to  the  ignorant  printers  and  proof-readers  of 
by- gone  centuries.  Orthografy,  in  its  root  sense,  can  hardly  be  con- 
sidered an  element  of  Victorian  English. 

Indeed,  as  Lord  Lytton  well  says  "A  more  lying,  round  about,  puz- 
zle-headed delusion  than  that  by  which  we  confuse  the  clear  instincts 
of  truth  in  our  accursed  system  of  spelling  was  never  concocted  by 
the  father  of  falsehood.  How  can  a  system  of  education  nourish  that 
begins  by  so  monstrous  a  falsehood,  which  the  sense  of  hearing  suffices 
to  contradict?" 

"  The  greatest  genius  among  grammarians,"  says  Dr.  March,  "Jacob 
Grimm,  but  a  few  years  ago,  congratulated  the  other  Europeans  that 
the  English  had  not  made  the  discovery  that  a  whimsical,  antiquated 
orthografy  stood  in  the  way  of  the  universal  acceptance  of  the  lan- 
guage." 

And  why  is  it  a  u  whimsical,  antiquated  orthografy?" 

Because,  being  unfonetic,  it  is  unetymological.  "  It. is  the  sound  of 
the  spoken  word."  says  Skeat,  "which  lias  to  be  accounted  for,  arid 
all  symbols  which  disguise  this  sound  are  faulty  and  worthless.  If 
our  old  writers  had  not  used  a  fonetic  system,  we  should  have^no  true 
data  to  go  by."  u  We  still  retain  much,"  says  the  same  author,  "  of 
the  Elizabethan  spelling,  which,  even  at  that  peiiod,  was  retrospective, 
with  a  Victorian  pronunciation.  *  *  *  The  changes  in  spelling 
since  1600  are  comparatively  trifling,  and  are  chiefly  due  to  the  printers 
who  aimed  at  producing  a  complete  uniformity  of  spelling,  which  was 
practically  accomplisht  shortly  before  1700.  The  changes  in  pronun- 
ciation are  great,  especially  in  vowel  sounds.  *  *  *  The  shortest 
description  of  modern  spelling  is  to  say,  that,  speaking  generally,  it 
represents  a  Victorian  pronunciation  of  popular  words  b/  means  of 
symbols  imperfectly  adapted  to  an  Elizabethan  pronunciation;  the 
symbols  themselves  being  mainly  due  to  the  Anglo-French  scribes,  of 
the  Plantagenet  period,  whose  system  was  meant  to  be  fonetic.  It 
also  aims  at  suggesting  to  the  eye  the  original  forms  of  learned  words. 
It  is  thus  governed  by  two  conflicting  principles,  neither  of  which,  even 
in  its  own  domain,  is  consistently  carried  out." 

And  again,  says  Dr.  March,  "Oaxtori  brought  over  a  force  of  Dutch 
printers,  who  set  up  manuscripts  as  best  they  could,  with  *many  an 
objurgation.  People  ceast,  at  last,  to  feel  any  necessity  for  keeping 
sounds  and  dgns  together.  The  written  words  have  come  to  be  asso- 
ciated with  the  spoken  words  as  wholes  without  reference  to  the  sounds 
which  the  separate  letters  would  indicate.  Changes  in  the  sounds  go 
on  without  record  in  the  writing.  Ingenious  etymologists  slip  in  new 


11 

silent  letters  as  records  of  history  drawn  from  their  imagination.  Old 
monsters  propagate  themselves  in  the  congenial  environment,  and 
altogether  we  have  attained  the  worst  spelling  on  the  planet.  And 
we  have  been  proud  of  it,  and  we  are  fond  of  it." 

The  actual  condition  of  things,  then,  as  Meiklejohn  (late  Asst. 
Commissioner  of  the  Endowed  School  Commission  for  Scotland)  puts 
it,  is  :  Out  of  the  26  letters,  only  8  are  true,  fixt  and  permanent  quali- 
ties— that  is,  are  true  to  both  eye  and  ear.  There  are  38  distinct 
sounds  (Sayce  recognizes  40,  others  32)  in  our  spoken  language;  and 
there  are  about  400  distinct  symbols  (simple  and  compound)  to  repre- 
sent these  38  sounds.  In  other  words,  there  are  400  servants  to  do  the 
work  of  38.  Of  the  26  letters,  15  have  acquired  a  habit  of  hiding 
themselves.  They  are  wrilten  and  printed,  but  the  ear  has  no  account 
of  them  ;  such  as  w  in  wrong  and  gh  in  right.  The  vowel  sounds  are 
printed  in  different  ways;  a  long  0,  for  example,  has  13  printed  sym- 
bols to  represent  it.  And  Isaac  Pitman  shows  that  in  our  magnificent 
tongue,  with  its  wretched  orthografy,  the  long  vowel  a  (in  father)  is 
represented  in  5  different  ways;  the  a  (in  gate)  in  17  ways;  the  e  has 
21  different  spellings;  the  oa  (in  broad)  is  represented  by  9  different 
combinations  of  letters;  the  vowel  o  has  19  modes  of  representation, 
and  the  vowel  "  00''  (in  smooth)  has  21.*  Mr.  Ellis  gives  a  list  of  97 
signs  and  combinations  to  express  vowel  sounds,  and  having,  in  all, 
319  meanings,  or  a  little  more  than  an  average  of  three  meanings  to 
each  sign  or  combination;  and,  further,  he  shows  that  34  consonant 
signs  have  79  uses. 

As  a  consequence  of  all  this  (and  more  if  we  were  to  stop  to  discuss 
it),  an  enthusiastic  fonetist  has  calculated  that  the  word  scissors  can 
be  correctly  spelt  in  596,580  different  ways,  when  it  ought  to  be  pos- 
sible to  spell  it  in  but  one,  and  that  one  obvious  to  a  child  or  a  for- 
eigner who  has  never  seen  it  in  print  nor  heard  it  spelt.  In  brief,  we 
have,  says  Prof.  Whitney,  ua  greater  discordance  between  the  written 
and  the  spoken  speech  among  us  than  in  any  other  community  of 
equal  enlightenment.  This  is  the  whole  truth ;  and  any  attempt  to 
make  it  appear  otherwise  savors  only  of  the  wisdom  of  the  noted  fox 
who  lost  his  brush  in  a  trap,  and  wanted  to  persuade  himself  and  the 
world  that  the  curtailment  was  a  benefit  and  a  decoration.  Ever}' 
departure  from  the  rule  that  writing  is  the  handmaid  of  speech  is  a 
dereliction  of  principle,  and  an  abandonment  of  advantages  which 
seem  to  have  been  long  ago  assured  to  us,  by  the  protracted  labors  of 
many  generations  of  the  most  gifted  races  known  to  history.  *  *  * 
That  the  written  word  in  any  case  deviates  from  the  spoken  is  a  fault 
which  may,  indeed,  admit  of  palliation,  even  amounting  to  excuse, 
but  which  it  is  an  offense  against  all  true  science  and  sound  sense  to 
extol  as  a  merit/' 

*Authorities  differ  somewhat  in  these  figures.  Dr.  Thomas  Hill  places  the  number 
of  symbols  for  long  a  (in  gate)  as  high  as  thirty. 


12 

Such  being  the  state  to  which  our  written  speech  has  come,  the 
natural  question  to  ask  is  : 

3.  Is  REFORM  DESIRABLE  ? — Such  a  question  is  answered  in  its  own 
asking.  Reform  or  improvement  is  always  desirable  in  anything. 
Whether  it  is  possible  or  feasible  is  another  question.  But  let  us  see, 
briefly,  why  an  improved  or  reformed  spelling  would  be  desirable,  by 
looking  at  some  of  the  benefits  that  would  accrue  from  it. 

(a)  It  would  tend  toward  a  greater  uniformity  in  pronunciation. — 
Upon  this  point  Whitney  says  :    "So  loose  and  indefinite  is  now  the 
tie  between  writing  and  utterance,  that  existing  differences  of  utter- 
ance hide  themselves  under  cover  of  an  orthografy  which  fits  them 
all  equally,  while  others  spring  up  uncheckt.     No  small  part  of  the 
conservative  force  expends  itself  upon  the  visible  form  alone;  whereas, 
if  the  visible  and  audible  form  were  more  strictly  accordant,  it  would 
have  its  effect  upon  the  latter  also. 

(b)  It  would  greatly  economize  time,  space,  labor  and  money. 

"  The  amount  of  saving  would  depend,"  says  Dr.  J.  H.  Gladstone, 
*k  very  much  upon  the  system  adopted.  The  mere  removal  of  dupli- 
cated consonants  would  save  1.6  per  cent,  and  of  the  mute  e^s  an  addi- 
tional 4  per  cent.  In  the  New  Testament,  printed  in  fonetic  type  in 
1849,  by  Alexander  J.  Ellis,  100  letters  and  spaces  are  represented  by 
83.  As  far  as  printing  and  paper  are  concerned,  therefore,  a  six-shil- 
ling book  would  be  reduced  to  five  shillings."  This  is  a  saving  of  17 
per  cent. 

But  the  question  of  economy  is  more  far-reaching  than  we  might  at 
first  suppose.  In  the  president's  address  before  the  American  Philo- 
logical Association,  in  1874,  he  said  :  ''The  time  lost  by  it  is  a  large 
part  of  the  whole  school  time  of  the  mass  of  men.  Count  the  hours 
that  each  man  wastes  in  learning  to  read  at  school,  the  hours  which 
he  wastes  through  life  from  the  hindrance  to  easy  reading,  the  hours 
wasted  at  school  in  learning  to  spell,  the  hours  spent  through  life  in 
keeping  up  and  perfecting  this  knowledge  of  spelling,  in  consulting 
dictionaries — a  work  that  never  ends — the  hours  that  he  spends  in 
writing  silent  letters.  *  *  *  The  cost  of  printing  the  silent  let- 
ters of  the  English  language  is  to  be  counted  by  millions  of  dollars  for 
each  generation.  And  yet  literary  amateurs  fall  in  love  with  these 
squintings  and  lispings.  They  try  to  defend  them  by  pleading  their 
advantage  in  the  study  of  etymology.  But  a  changeless  orthografy 
destroys  the  material  for  etymological  study,  and  written  records  are 
valuable  to  the  filologist  just  in  proportion  as  they  are  accurate  rec- 
ords of  speech  as  spoken  from  year  to  year."  This  brings  us  to  the 
next  point. 

(c)  If  some  etymologies  would  be  obscured,  more  would  le  evidenced 
and  clarified,  none  could  be  lost. 

What  is  known  as  the  "  etymological  argument"  against  spelling 
reform  has  been  so  often  and  so  fully  met  by  the  scholars  best  quaJi- 


13 

fied  to  speak  that  it  would  seem  unnecessary  to  do  more  than  allude 
to  it  here.  And  yet  it  is  sure  to  be  the  first  objection  raised  by  the 
person  of  education,  and  even  of  scholarly  habit,  who  has  not  made 
specific  study  of  the  subject.  It  is,  indeed,  at  once  the  most  plausi- 
ble and  the  most  baseless  of  all  objections.  Even  if  all  trace  of  roots 
were  lost  from  present  forms,  there  would  still  be  no  danger  of  any 
such  sacrifice  of  linguistic  facts.  But  if  none  could  be  lost,  so  com- 
paratively few  would  be  obscured,  while  many  false  etymologies  would 
be  disowned,  many  true  ones  restored  and  made  plain.  This  is  an  es- 
tablished fact  among  filologists,  as  will  appear  from  the  following, 
from  Max  Miiller :  "  An  objection  often  made  to  spelling  reform  is 
that  it  would  utterly  destroy  the  historical  or  etymological  character 
of  the  English  language.  Suppose  it  did  ;  what  then  ?  Language  is 
not  made  for  scholars  arid  etymologists  ;  and  if  the  whole  race  of  Eng- 
lish etymologists  were  really  swept  away  by  the  introduction  of  spell- 
ing reform,  I  hope  they  would  be  the  first  to  rejoice  in  sacrificing  them 
selves  in  so  good  a  cause.  But  is  it  really  the  case  that  the  historical 
continuity  of  the  English  language  would  be  broken  by  the  adoption 
of  fonetic  spelling,  and  that  the  profession  of  the  etymologist  would  be 
gone  forever?  I  say  no,  most  emphatically,  to  both  propositions.  Be- 
cause the  Italians  write  Mosofo,  are  they  less  aware  than  the  English, 
who  write  philosopher*  that  they  have  before  them  the  Latin  philoso- 
phus  and  the  Greek  Mosofos  f  If  we  write  f  in  fancy,  why  not  in 
phantom  ?  If  in  frenzy  and  frantic,  why  not  in  phrenology  f  A  lan- 
guage which  tolerates  vial  for  phial  need  not  shiver  at  c  iilosofer.'1 
What  people  call  the  etymological  consciousness  of  the  speaker  is 
strictly  a  matter  of  oratorical  sentiment  only.  If  anybody  will  tell 
me  at  what  date  etymological  spelling  is  to  begin,  whether  at  1500  A. 
D.,  or  at  1000  A.  D.,  or  at  500  A.  D.,  I  am  willing  to  discuss  the  ques- 
tion. Till  then,  I  beg  to  say,  that  etymological  spelling  would  play 
greater  havoc  in  English  than  fonetic  spelling,  even  if  we  are  to  draw 
a  line  not  more  than  five  hundred  years  ago.  If  we  write  puny,  puisne, 
we  might  as  well  write  post-natus.  We  might  spell  coy,  quietus  ; 
pert,  apertus  ;  priest,  presbyter  ;  master,  mag ister  ;  sexton,  sacristan, 
etc."  And  from  Prof.  A.  H.  Sayce  :  "  We  are  told  that  to  reform  our 
alfabet  would  destroy  the  etymologies  of  our  words.  Ignorance  is  the 
cause  of  so  rash  a  statement.  The  science  of  etymology  deals  with 
sounds,  not  with  letters,  and  no  true  etymology  is  possible  when  we 
do  not  know  the  exact  way  in  which  words  are  pronounced.  The 
whole  science  of  comparative  filology  is  based  on  the  assumption  that 
the  ancient  Hindus,  Greeks,  Romans  and  Goths  spelt  pretty  nearly  as 
they  pronounced.  English  spelling  has  become  a  mere  series  of  arbi 
trary  combinations,  an  embodiment  of  the  wild  guesses  and  etj-molo- 
gies  of  a  pre-scientific  age,  and  the  haphazard  caprice  of  ignorant 
printers.  It  is  good  for  little  else  but  to  disguise  our  language,  to  hinder 
education  and  to  suggest  false  etymologies."  And  from  Henry  Sweet : 


14 

"The  notion  that  the  present  spelling  has  an  etymological  value  was 
quite  popular  twenty-five  years  ago.  But  this  view  is  now  entirely 
abandoned  by  filologists ;  only  a  few  half  trained  dabblers  in  the 
science  uphold  it." 

Testimony  of  this  kind  is  worth  more  than  a  logical  array  of  facts 
to  the  average  mind,  because  it  adds  to  the  cold  fact,  the  fervor  of  the 
personal  conviction  of  those  whose  convictions  are  themselves  the 
result  of  the  logic  of  facts.  And  just  here  we  cannot  do  better  than 
quote  from  Skeat's  "The  Principles  of  English  Etymology." 

u  The  old  spelling  was,  in  the  main,  very  strictly  etymological,  be- 
cause it  was  so  unconsciously.*  In  striving  to  be  fonetic,  our  ancestors 
kept  up  the  history  of  words,  and  recorded,  more  or  less  exactly,  the 
changes  that  took  place  in  them  from  time  to  time.  But  in  the  six- 
teenth century  an  entirely  new  idea  was  for  the  first  time  started,  and 
probably  took  its  rise  from  the  revival  of  learning,  which  introduced 
the  study  of  Greek,  and  brought  classical  words,  and  with  them  a 
classical  mode  of  spelling,  to  the  front;  a  movement  which  was  as- 
sisted by  the  fact  that  the  spelling  was  all  the  while  becoming  less 
fonetic.  This  new  idea  involved  the  attempt  to  be  consciously  ety- 
mological ;  i.  e.,  to  reduce  the  spelling  of  English  words,  as  far  as  pos- 
sible to  an  exact  conformity  in  outward  appearance  with  the  Latin 
and  Greek  words,  from  which  they  were  borrowed.  But  it  was  only 
possible  to  do  this  with  a  portion  of  the  language.  It  was  easy  to  do 
this  where  words  were  actually  borrowed  from  those  languages,  as, 
for  example,  in  the  case  of  such  a  verb  as  to  tolerate,  which  was  now 
spelt  with  one  Z,  in  order  to  conform  it  in  outward  appearance  to  the 
Latin  toterare.  But  the  words  of  native  English  or  Scandinavian 
origin  were  less  tractable ;  for  which  reason  our  writers,  wisely  enough, 
let  them  alone.  There  remained  words  of  French  origin,  and  these 
suffered  considerably  at  the  hands  of  the  pedants,  who  were  anything 
but  scholars  as  regarded  Old  French.  For  example,  the  Latin  debita 
had  become  the  Old  French  and  Middle  English  dette,  by  assimilation 
of  the  ~b  to  t  in  the  contracted  form  detfta*  precisely  as  it  became  delta 
in  Italian.  'The  modern  French  and  the  Italian  have  the  forms  dette 
and  detta  still.  But  in  the  sixteenth  century  the  disease  of  the  so- 
called  'etymological'  spelling  had  attackt  the  French  language  as 
well  as  the  English,  and  there  was  a  craze  for  rendering  such  ety- 
mology evident  to  the  eye.  Consequently,  the  Old  French  dette  was 
recast  in  the  form  of  debte^  and  the  Middle  English  dette  was  respelt 
debte  or  debt  in  the  same  way.  Hence,  we  actually  find  in  Cotgrave's 
French  dictionary  the  entry  :  4  Debte,  a  debt.'  Another  word  similarly 
treated  was  the  Old  French  and  Middle  English  doute  ;  and,  accordingly, 
Cotgrave  gives  c  Doubte,  a  doubt.'  The  modern  French  has  gone  back 

*  "  Conscious  attempts  at  etymology  sometimes  produced  rather  queer  results. 
Thus  the  M.  E.  femcle  was  turned  into  female,  obviously  because  men  fancied  it 
must  have  some  connection  with  male.'1'' 


15 

to  the  original  Old  French  spellings  dette  and  doute  ;  but  we,  in  our 
ignorance,  have  retained  the  I  in  doubt,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  we 
do  not  dare  to  sound  it.  The  rackers  of  our  orthografy,  no  doubt, 
trusted,  and  with  some  reason,  to  the  popular  ignorance  of  the  older 
and  truer  spelling,  and  the  event  has  justified  their  expectation;  for 
we  have  continued  to  insert  the  b  in  doubt  and  debt  (properly  dout 
det)  to  the  present  day,  and  there  is,  doubtless,  a  large  majority  among 
us  who  believe  such  spellings  to  be  correct.  So  easy  is  it  for  writers 
to  be  misled  by  paying  too  great  a  regard  to  Latin  spelling,  and  so 
few  there  are  who  are  likely  to  take  the  trouble  of  ascertaining  all  the 
historical  facts. 

"Most  curious  of  all  is  the  fate  of  the  word  fault.  In  Old  French 
and  Middle  English  it  is  always  faute ;  but  the  sixteenth  century 
turned  it  into  French  faulte.  English  fault,  by  the  insertion  of  I.  For 
all  that,  the  I  often  remained  mute,  so  that  even  as  late  as  the  time  of 
Pope  it  was  still  mute  for  him,  as  is  shown  by  his  riming  it  with  ought 
('  Elosia  to  Abelard,'  185 ;  l  Essay  on  Man,'  i,  69),  with  thought  ('  Es- 
say on  Ciiticism,'  422;  'Moral  Essays,'  Ep.  ii,  73),  and  with  taught 
('Moral  Essays,'  Ep.  ii,  212).  But  the  persistent  presentation  of  the 
letter  I  to  the  eye  has  prevailed  at  last,  and  we  now  invariably  sound 
it  in  English,  whilst  in  French  it  has  become  faute  once  more.  The 
object,  no  doubt,  was  to  inform  us  that  the  French  faute  is  ultimately 
derived  from  Latin  f oiler e ;  but  this  does  not  seem  so  far  beyond  the 
scope  of  human  intelligence  that  so  much  pains  need  have  been 
taken  to  record  the  discovery.  Another 'curious  falsification  is  that 
of  the  Middle  English  vitailles,  Old  French  vitailles,  from  Latin 
victualia.  The  not  very  difficult  discovery  of  the  etymology  of  this 
word  was  hailed  with  such  delight  that  it  was  at  once  transformed 
into  French  victailles  and  English  victuals.  (See  Cotgrave.)  For 
all  that,  the  Middle  English  vitailles  was  duly  shortened,  in  the  pro- 
nunciation, to  vittles,  precisely  as  Middle  English  batailles  was  short- 
ened to  battles  ;  and  vittles  it  still  remains  for  all  practical  purposes. 
Swift,  in  his  '  Polite  Conversation,'  has  dared  to  spell  it  so ;  and  our 
comic  writers  are  glad  to  do  the  same. 

';The  form  of  tne  word  advance  records  a  ludicrous  error  in  ety- 
mology. The  older  form  was  avance,  in  which  the  prefix  a-  is  de- 
rived from  the  French  a  which  arose  from  the  Latin  ab.  Unfortu 
nately  it  was  supposed  to  represent  the  French  a  which  arose  from 
the  Latin  ad,  and  this  Latin  ad  was  actually  introduced  into  the  writ- 
ten form,  after  which  the  d  came  to  be  sounded.  If,  then,  the  prefix 
ad-  in  ad-vance  can  be  said  to  represent  anything,  it  must  be  taken 
to  represent  a  Latin  prefix  abd-l  It  would  be  an  endless  task  to 
make  a  list  of  all  the  similar  vagaries  of  the  Tudor  remodelers  of 
our  spelling,  who  were  doubtless  proud  of  their  work  and  convinced 
that  they  were  displaying  great  erudition.  Yet  their  method  was 
extremely  incomplete,  as  it  was  wholly  inconsistent  with  itself.  After 


16 

reducing  the  word  toller  ate  to  tolerate,  they  ought  to  have  altered 
follie  to  folie,  as  the  latter  is  the  French  form ;  but  this  they  never 
did.  They  should  likewise  have  altered  matter  to  mater,  since  there 
is  only  one  t  in  the  Latin  materia  ;  but  this  they  never  did.  They 
had  got  hold  of  a  false  principle,  and  did  not  attempt  to  carry  it  out 
consistently.  So  much  the  better,  or  our  spelling  would  have  been 
even  worse  than  it  is  now,  which  is  saying  a  great  deal. 

"  I  believe  that  the  stupidity  of  the  pedantic  method  which  I  have 
just  described  is  very  little  understood;  and  that,  on  the  contrary, 
most  Englishmen,  owing  to  an  excessive  study  of  the  classics  as  com- 
pared with  English  (the  history  of  which  is  neglected  to  an  almost 
incredible  and  wholly  shameless  extent),  actually  sympathize  with 
the  pedants.  But  the  error  of  their  attempt  will  be  apparent  to  any 
who  will  take  the  pains  to  think  the  matter  over  with  a  little  care. 
7'  :r  object  was,  irrespectively  of  the  sound,  to  render  the  etymology 
obvious,  not  to  the  ear,  but  to  the  eye  ;  and  hence  the  modern  system 
of  judging  of  the  spelling  of  words  by  the  eye  only.  There  is  now 
only  one  rule,  a  rule  which  is  often  carefully  but  foolishly  concealed 
from  learners,  viz.,  to  go  entirely  by  the  look  of  a  word,  and  to  spell 
it  as  we  have  seen  it  spelt  in  books.  If  we  do  this  we  hug  ourselves 
in  the  belief  that  we  are  spelling  'correctly,'  a  belief  which  even 
good  scholars  entertain. 

"Certainly  the  pedants  pat  several  words  right,  as  they  thought; 
but  their  knowledge  was  slight.  They  let  the  pure  English  and 
Scandinavian  words  alone ;'  and  as  we  have  seen,  they  mended  (as 
they  thought)  the  spellings  of  French  words,  not  by  comparison  with 
Old  French,  which  might  have  been  justified,  but  by  comparison  with 
Latin  and  Greek  only  ;  and  they  were  frequently  misled  by  the  fancy 
that  Latin  was  derived  in  its  entirety  from  the  Greek.  Thus  they 
fancied  that  the  Latin  silva  was  derived  from  the  Greek  £/>?,  and  ac- 
cordingly altered  its  spelling  to  sylva.  Hence,  even  in  English,  we 
have  to  command  and  immortalize  this  blunder  by  writing  sylvan. 
They  seem  to  have  had  a  notion  that  the  Latin  stilus  was  derived,  of 
all  things,  from  the  Greek  (rroXoq  (a  pillar),  which  woujd  be  extremely 
inconvenient,  we  must  suppose,  as  a  writing  implement;  the  fact 
being  that  stilus  and  ffro/.oq  have  no  etymological  connection.  This 
blunder  we  commemorate  by  writing  style 

"  We  write  science  because  of  its  connection  with  the  Latin  scientia  ; 
and  for  this  reason  some  writers  of  the  seventeenth  century,  struck 
with  the  beauty  to  the  eye  of  the  silent  c  after  s,  admiringly  copied 
in  such  words  as  scite,  scitation  and  scent.  The  etymology  of  the  two 
former  was,  however,  so  obvious  that  the  habit  fell  into  disuse;  but 
the  etymology  of  scent  was  less  obvious,  and  so  we  write  scent  still ! 
What,  again,  can  be  more  absurd  than  the  final  ue  in  the  word  tongue, 
as  if  it  must  needs  be  conformed  to  the  French  langue  f  But  when 
once  introduced,  it  of  course  remained,  because  none  but  scholars  of 


17 

Anglo  Saxon  could  know  its  etymology.  It  is  impossible  to  enumer- 
ate all  the  numerous  anomalies  which  the  disastrous  attempt  to  make 
etymology  visible  has  introduced.  Yet  this  is  the  valueless  system 
which  is  so  much  lauded  by  those  who  have  made  no  adequate  study 
of  the  true  history  of  our  language." 

A  long  list  might  be  added.  For  instance,  the  old  Hand  had  an  s 
inserted  because  of  its  supposed  derivation  from  insula.  Old  English 
rime  borrowed  an  h  from  a  supposed  Greek  original,  like  rhythm,  and 
gave  us  rhyme.  The  I  has  been  inserted  in  coude,  to  make  it  like 
should  and  would  for  which  there  is  a  reasonable  use  of  the  1.  Mil- 
ton's  sovran  (Latin  superanus)  was  supposed  to  have  to  do  with 
reigning,  and  was  so  transformed  to  indicate  it,  by  writing  sovereign. 

Says  March  :  k'  Accurse,  earlier  acurse,  from  Anglo-Saxon  ^-inten- 
sive, and  curse,  simulates  by  its  unfonetic  double  consonant  a  Latin 
origin  and  prefix  ad ;  many  words  are  like  it:  affair,  French  a  fair, 
i.  e.,  ado  ;  afford  a-forih  ;  affright,  from  a-fyrhtan  ;  affray,  past  parti- 
ciple correctly  afraid;  annoy,  earlier  anol,  Old  French  anoi,  from 
Latin  in  odio,  and  so  on  through  the  prefixes ;  allegro  is  transformed 
from  Latin  alacrum  ;  hurricane,  French  ouragan,  Spanish  huracan,  a 
word  from  one  of  the  languages  of  the  aborigines  of  America,  doubles 
its  r  to  persuade  etymologists  that  it  hurries  the  canes.  The  double 
consonants,  never  correct  for  pronunciation,  are  a  nest  of  etymological 
blunders,  and  the  digraf  vowels  are  as  bad.  Somewhat  different  from 
these  sheer  blunders  are  those  words  in  which  their  unfonetic  spelling 
points  to  some  remote  derivation,  but  yet  disguises  the  history  of  the 
words.  To  follow  up  the  double  consonants,  a  very  large  part  of  the 
apparent  compounds  of  Latin  prefixes  suggest  a  mistake.  The  words 
are  not  really  Latin  compounds,  but  French.  Many  with  ad-,  for  ex- 
ample, were  made  in  French  with  the  French  a,  and  in  French  and 
and  Early  English  are  so  spelt.  The  double  consonant  is  a  modern 
insertion,  which  falsifies  the  sound  and  the  history  to  give  the  remote 
school-Latin.  Such  are  accompany,  Old  French  acompaignier,  com- 
pounded of  a  and  compaignier,  to  which  there  is  no  school-Latin 
word  corresponding;  Early  English  acoint,  Latin  cognitus,  disguised 
now  in  the  form  acquaint  ;  acomplice  ;  acomplish  ;  address,  earlier 
adress,  French  adresser  ;  afirm  ;  anx  ;  afront  ;  agrieve  ;  alegeance  , 
alie,  Old  French  alier,  alley ;  apease,  French  a  pais  ;  apraise,  a  preis  ; 
arears ;  asuage ;  aturneye,  attorney,  etc.  These  examples,  taken 
from  the  beginning  of  the  alfabet,  may  well  make  the  stickler  for 
historical  spelling  look  twice  at  a  double  consonant  whenever  he 
pees  it. 

"There  are  many  words  which  have  letters  in  them  which  contribute 
nothing  towards  ancient  history,  and  falsify  the  present.  Words  ending 
in  silent  e  after  a  short  syllable  are  examples.  This  e  tells  no  history, 
it  is  prevailingly  an  orthografic  expedient  to  denote  that  the  vowel 
before  it  is  long;  it  lengthens  fat  into  fate,  lit  into  lite,  fin  into  -fine, 
2 


18 

not  into  note,  and  the  like.  Whenever  it  follows  a  short  vowel,  there- 
fore, it  is  false  as  well  as  wasteful:  genuin  is  standard  English  pro- 
nunciation, genuine,  is  a  vulgar  corruption;  hav  spells  the  word  in- 
tended, have  should  rimt  with  gave,  slave,  knave,  rave,  etc.  We  ought 
to  write  imbecii,  medicin,  treatis,  favorit,  hypocrit,  infinit,  deilnit.  in- 
dicativ,  subjunctiv,  and  the  like.  Several  hundred  words  b?long  to 
this  class,  in  great  part  learned  terms  from  Greek  or  Latin,  and  com- 
mon to  many  languages.  To  scholars  they  look  more  natural  and 
scholarly,  as  the  Germans  and  most  of  the  Europeans  write  them, 
without  the  final  e.  This  is  one  of  the  amendments  which  gives  best 
promise  of  general  adoption.  The  Spelling  Reform  Association  pub- 
lish as  one  of  their  rules  for  immediate  use,  'Omit  silent  e  after  a  short 
vowel,'  and  five  of  the  eleven  new  spellings  recommended  by  the 
Philological  Association  are  examples  of  it — deiinit,  qtv,  hav,  innnit, 
liv.  *  *  *  Feign,  Old  English  fein,  fain,  from  Old  French  faindre, 
has  assumed  the  g  of  Latin  -fingo.  *  *  *  Fonetikis  the  very  Greek 
(fur^ru-o-^  the  natural  old  form  of  it  in  Roman  letters;  ?&{>  is  fur; 
cravp;,  fari  ;  Fabius,  $<i$u*s,  and  the  like.  But  when  the  Greeklings  at 
Rome  began  to  aflect  a  pure  Athenian  accent,  and  retained  in  words 
newly  taken  from  Greek  the  old  sound  for  <p,  which  had  been  that  of 
p  followed  by  h,  they  wrote  ph  in  such  words  to  represent  their  way 
of  sounding  it.  The  fashion  past  away  at  Rome.  The  Italians,  like 
the  Spaniards,  have  returned  to  /"." 

•'The  first  question  is,"  says  Prof.  Max  Miiller,  "in  what  sense  can 
the  present  spelling  of  English  be  called  historical  ?  We  have  only  to 
go  back  a  very  short  way  in  order  to  see  the  modern  upstart  character 
of  what  is  called  historical  spelling.  We  now  write  pleasure,  meas- 
ure, and  feather,  but  not  very  long  ago,  in  Spenser's  time,  these  words 
were  spelt  plesure,  mesure,  f ether.  Tyndale  wrote  frute  ;  t^e  i  in 
fruit  is  a  mere  restoration  of  the  French  spelling.  *  *  *  The  b  [of 
debi\  was  likewise  reintroduced  in  doubt,  but  the  p  was  not  restored 
in  count  (French  compter,  Latin  computare),  where  p  had  at  least  the 
same  right  as  b  in  doubt.  Thus,  receipt,  resumes  the  Latin  p,  but 
deceit  does  without  it.  To  deign  keeps  the  g,  to  disdain  does  without 
it  #  *  *  If  we  wisht  to  write  historically,  we  ought  to  write  salm 
instead  of  psalm,  for  the  initial  p  being  lost  in  pronunciation  was 
dropt  in  writing  at  a  very  early  time  (A.  S.  sealm),  and  was  reintro- 
duced simply  to  please  some  ecclesiastical  etymologists;  also  nevew 
(French  neveu)  instead  of  nephew,  which  is  both  unetymological  and 
unhistorical.  *  *  *  There  are,  in  fact,  many  spellings  which  would 
be  at  the  same  time  more  historical  and  more  fonetic.  Why  write 
little*  when  no  one  pronounces  little,  and  when  the  old  spelling  was 
lytel  ?  Why  girdle,  when  the  old  spelling  was  girdel  f  The  same  rule 
applies  to  nearly  all  words  ending  in  le.  such  as  sickle,  ladle,  apple,  etc., 
where  the  etymology  is  completely  obscured  by  the  present  orthografy. 
Why  scent,  but  dissent,  when  even  Milton  still  wrote  sent?  *  *  * 


19 

Why  accede, precede,  secede,  but  exceed,  proceed,  succeed?  Why,  in- 
deed, except  to  waste  the  precious  time  of  children?" 

And  Dr.  James  A.  II.  Murray,  the  editor  of  the  mammoth  new  his- 
torical Dictionary,  says  :  '-Let  us  recommend  the  restoration  of  the 
historical  t  after  breath  consonants,  which  printers  during  the  past 
century  have  industriously  perverted  to  ed,  writing  fetcht,  blusht,pickt, 
drest,  winkt,  like  Shakespeare,  and  Herbert,  and  Milton,  and  Addison, 
and  as  we  actually  do  in  lost,  left,  felt,  meant,  burnt,  llest,  taught. 
Laughed  for  taught  is  not  a  whir,  less  monstrous  than  taughted,  soughted, 
would  be  for  taught,  sought ;  nor  is  worked  for  workt  less  odious  than 
wroughted  would  be  for  wrought.  *  *  *  The  termination  of  the 
agent  our  should  be  uniformly  leveled  to  or  (which  is  Old  French), 
as  already  done  in  so  many  words,  like  author,  doctor,  senator,  orator 
(all  of  which  are  adoptions  from  French,  not  from  Latin)." 

(d.)  The  present  so-called  spelling  is  the  chief  hindrance  to  educa- 
tion, and  a  chief  cause  of  illiteracy,  ignorance  and  degradation. — In 
his  "  Introduction  to  the  Science  of  Language,''  Prof.  Sayce  speaks  of 
the  ';  vicious  moral  training  afforded  by  a  system  that  makes  irra- 
tional authority  the  rule  of  correctness,  and  a  letter  represent  every 
other  sound  than  that  which  it  professes."  He  further  remarks  that 
the  "dissociation  between  sound  and  symbol  to  which  the  child  has 
been  accustomed  from  his  earliest  years,  mdkes  the  English  and  the 
French  notoriously  the  worst  linguists  in  Europe.  The  inadequacy  of 
English  spelling  is  exceeded  only  by  that  of  the  Gaelic,  and  in.  the 
comparative  condition  of  the  Irish  and  Scotch  Gaels  on  the  one  side, 
and  the  Welsh  Oymry  on  the  other,  we  may  read  a  lesson  of  the  prac- 
tical effects  of  disregarding  the  warnings  of  science.  Welsh  is  fone- 
tically  spelt,  the  result  being  that  the  Welsh,  as  a  rule,  are  well 
educated  and  industrious,  and  that  their  language  is  maintained  in 
full  vigor,  so  that  a  Welsh  child  has  his  wits  sharpened  and  his  mind 
opened  by  being  able  to  speak  two  languages,  English  and  Welsh.  In 
Ireland  and  Scotland,  on  the  contrary,  the  old  language  is  fast  perish- 
ing; and  the  people  can  neither  read  nor  write,  unless  it  be  in  Eng- 
lish." 

The  most  complete  and  convincing  exhibit  upon  the  educational 
question  is  that  which  has  been  made  by  Dr.  J.  H  Gladstone,  F.  R. 
S.,  member  of  the  School  Board  for  London,  and  sometime  President 
of  the  English  Spelling  Reform  Association.  Dr.  Gladstone's  state- 
ments are  drawn  from  a  thorough  investigation  of  the  National,  British 
and  Wesleyan  schools  as  well  as  board  schools,  and  from  village 
schools,  town  schools  and  schools  of  the  metropolis.  He  says  :  ''From 
these  data  it  is  easy  to  calculate  that  an  average  English  child,  spend- 
ing eight  years  in  school,  and  making  the  not  unusual  amount  of  400 
attendances  per  annum,  will  have  spent  on  an  average  2,320  hours  in 
spelling,  reading  and  dictation.  *  *  *  The  spelling  of  the  Italian 


20 

language  is,  as  far  as  I  am  aware,  the  most  perfect  of  any  in  Europe, 
with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  the  Spanish.  It  is,  in  fact,  almost 
strictly  fonetic  ;  that  is,  each  sound  is  exprest  by  its  own  letter,  and 
each  letter  has  but  one  sound  *  *  *  1  have  gathered  information 
from  different  parts  of  Italy,  and  fortunately  the  detailed  programs  of 
the  instruction  in  elementary  schools  are  publisht.  From  them  it  ap- 
pears that  children  begin  school  at  six  or  seven  years  of  age,  and  that 
while  in  the  first  class,  which  usually  occupies  two  years,  they  learn 
to  read  with  a  correct  pronunciation,  and  do  exercises  in  transcription 
and  dictation.  On  passing  to  the  second  class  they  acquire  the  art  of 
reading  fluently  and  with  intelligence,  and  dictation  lessons  cease  at 
the  end  of  the  first  four  months.  As  the  summer  vacation  lasts  for 
two  months,  and  all  festivals,  both  civil  and  religious,  are  holidays, 
the  number  of  attendances  can  scarcely  be  greater  than  360.  As  re- 
ligious instruction  and  exercises,  arithmetic  and  writing  occupy  a 
large  proportion  of  the  five  hours  per  diem,  ten  hours  a  week  may  be 
taken  as  an  outside  estimate  for  learning  to  read  and  spell  in  the  first 
class  ;  while  in  the  second,  reading  may  occupy  five  hours,  and  dicta- 
tion two  and  a  half  hours  weekly,  but  the  latter  only  during  the  first 
half  the  school  year.  This  will  give  945  hours,  instead  of  2,320,  and 
indicates  that  an  Italian  child  of  about  nine  years  of  age  will  read  and 
spell  at  least  as  correctly  as  most  English  children  when  they  leave 
school  at  thirteen,  tho  the  Italian  child  was  two  years  later  in  begin- 
ning his  lessons. 

"The  spelling  of  the  German  language  is  incomparably  better  than 
our  own,  yet  many  mute  letters  are  employed,  and  several  sounds  are 
capable  of  being  represented  in  more  ways  than  one.  I  have  obtained 
information  from  educational  authorities  in  various  parts  of  Prussia, 
Saxony,  Wirtemberg,  Baden  and  Hamburg,  and  that  with  regard  to 
all  classes  of  society.  The  German  child  seems  usually  to  begin  his 
schooling  everywhere  at  six  years  of  age  ;  and  the  general  testimony 
is  that  he  learns  in  two  years,  if  not  in  a  shorter  time,  to  read  dis- 
tinctly and  correctly  books  which  are  not  above  his  comprehension. 

After  giving  some  details  he  continues :  u  It  appears,  therefore,  that 
the  irregularities  of  German  spelling,  trifling  as  they  are  when  com- 
pared with  ours,  greatly  prolong  the  time  required;  yet  a  German 
child  of  ten  is  about  on  a  par,  as  to  spelling  and  reading,  with  our 
fifth  standard  children,  and  is  thus  saved  about  two  years'  time,  tho 
he  commenced  to  learn  later. 

"  The  Dutch,  Danish  and  Swedish  languages  are  spelt  better  than 
our  own,  tho  their  orthografy  is  by  no  means  perfect.  The  informa- 
tion which  I  have  received  from  these  countries  does  not  give  definit 
numerical  data,  but  it  shows  that  reading,  at  least,  is  acquired  more 
quickly  than  with  us.  As  to  Sweden,  I  am  assured,  on  the  authority 
of  Mr.  Ekman,  the  school  board  inspector  of  the  Upsala  district,  that 


O1 

so. 

4  the  children  in  the  Swedish  board  schools  as  a  rule  are  able  to  read 
fluently  and  to  write  correctly  at  the  age  of  nine  to  I  en  years.' 

u  When,  however,  we  turn  to  France  we  find  a  language  which  is 
spelt  much  more  systematically  than  our  own,  but  has  peculiarities 
which  render  its  orthografy  almost  as  difficult.  Consequently  a  very 
large  amount  of  time  has  to  be  expended,  as  with  us,  in  dictation  and 
transcription.  *  *  *  In  reply  to  inquiries  as  to  the  comparative 
time  a  child  ignorant  of  letters,  but  understanding  English  and  Italian 
equally  well,  would  take  to  learn  how  to  read  and  write  each  language 
correctly,  the  principal  estimated  that  the  English  language  would 
require  about  twice  the  time  of  the  Italian. 

u  From  inquiries  which  I  have  made  respecting  the  Anglo-German 
schools  in  London,  the  general  result  seems  to  be  that  the  children 
acquire  as  great  a  proficiency  in  reading  and  writing  German  in  eight- 
een months  as  they  do  English  in  two  years.  These  schools  are  six  in 
number,  and  some  are  in  very  poor  and  some  in  respectable  neighbor- 
hoods. My  own  visits,  however,  to  some  of  these  schools  convinced 
me  that  notwithstanding  the  great  attention  paid  to  the  English  lan- 
guage, the  scholars  never  become  nearly  as  proficient  in  spelling  it  as 
they  do  in  spelling  the  German.  *  *  * 

u  If  English  orthografy  represented  English  pronunciation  as  closely 
as  the  Italian  does  at  least  half  the  time  and  expense  of  teaching  to 
read  and  spell  would  be  saved.  This  may  be  taken  as  1,200  hours  in 
a  lifetime,  and  as  more  than  half  a  million  of  money  ($2,500,000)  per 
annum  for  England  and  Wales  alone." 

Various  experiments  have  been  made  by  educators  in  teaching 
English  spelling  by  a  fonetic  alfabet.  The  result  shows  that  children 
taught  in  this  way  acquire  the  ordinary  spelling  much  more  easily 
afterward.  The  latest  expression  upon  this  point  is  from  the  pen  of 
Dr.  Thomas  Hill,  in  The  Forum  for  April,  1889.  He  says,  "  Experi- 
ence has  demonstrated  that  there  is  no  means  so  efficient  as  the  use  of 
simple  reading  books  printed  in  a  truly  fonetic  manner  so  that  each 
sound  has  but  one  representative  and  each  combination  of  letters  but 
one  sound.  The  accent  must  also  be  markt,  and  in  some  cases  the 
emfasis.  When  the  pupil  can  read  fluently  fonetic  English  he 
requires  but  a  few  weeks  to  learn  to  read  the  ordinary  spelling. 

"  Three  fundamentally  different  ways  have  been  proposed  of  giving 
to  elementary  books  a  fonetic  dress.  First,  by  diacritic  signs,  such  as 
are  used  in  pronouncing  dictionaries  ;  secondly,  by  using  an  enlarged 
alfabet;  thirdly,  by  a  serious  and  well  considered  imitation  of  those 
American  humorists  who  apply  the  twenty-six  Roman  letters  to  a 
fonetically  uniform  use.  The  first  method  is  not  only  expensive  and 
troublesome  to  print,  but  trying  to  the  reader's  eyes,  and  not  always 
applicable  without  respelling.  The  second  is  the  mode  of  the  Cincin- 
nati alfabet,  and  is  proposed  in  a  new  and  improved  form  in  Mr.  BelFs 
World-English.  The  Cincinnati  alfabet  was  tried  long  enough  and 


22 

extensively  enough  to  give  a  practical  experimental  demonstration  of 
its  immense  value.  We  tested  it  thoroughly  for  six  or  seven  years  in 
the  town  of  Waltham,  Massachusetts,  which  then  had  about  800 
children  in  the  public  schools.  The  effect  on  the  school  life  of  the  town 
was  very  markt.  The  saving  of  time  in  teaching  the  children  to  read 
and  spell  enabled  us  to  introduce  exercises  for  the  eye  and  the  hand, 
thus  cultivating  habits  of  observation,  skill  in  drawing  and  writing, 
and  geometrical  ability.  The  fonetic  print  corrected  the  brogue  of  the 
Irish  children  and  the  Yankee  dialect  of  the  American  in  a  surprising 
manner.  An  improvement  in  the  moral  and  intellectual  tone  of  the 
schools  was  also  noticeable,  arising  certainly  in  part  from  giving  the 
children  interesting  reading,  in  place  of  stupid  'a,  b,  ab,'  'b,  a,  ba,' 
and  instead  of  such  absurd  falsehood  as  that  of  saving  'sea,'  'you,' 
'pea,'  spells  ;cup.' 

"Fears  were  exprest  lest  this  method  should  injure  the  pupils' 
spelling.  In  order  to  test  that  question,  I  took  pains  to  procure, 
several  times,  lists  of  words  which  had  actually  been  used  in  Boston, 
Roxbury,  and  other  places  with  the  percentage  of  failures  on  each  list. 
Springing  these  lists,  without  warning,  upon  classes  of  the  same  grade 
in  Waltham,  we  always  found  our  peicentage  of  errors  very  much 
smaller  than  in  other  towns,  sometimes  I  think  only  one-third  as  large. 
We  also  questioned  each  pupil  in  our  high  school  as  to  the  amount  of 
time  which  he  or  she  had  devoted  in  his  or  her  whole  school  life  to 
fonotypy  and  fonografy.  Comparing  these  times  with  the  percentage 
of  errors  in  spelling,  by  the  same  scholars,  we  found  that  those  who 
had  read  the  most  fonotype  made  the  fewest  mistakes." 

One  point  more.  Out  of  1,972  failures  in  the  English  Civil  Service 
examinations,  1,866  failed  in  spelling.  The  Eight  Honorable  Robert 
Lowe,  formerly  Minister  of  Education  in  England,  challenged  the 
House  of  Commons  that  not  half  a  dozen  members  could  spell,  off- 
hand, the  word  "unparalleled."  The  Earl  of  Malmesbury,  having 
examined  the  State  papers  in  the  foreign  office,  says  that  no  Prime 
Minister  from  Lord  Bute  to  Lord  Palmerston  could  pass  an  examina- 
tion in  spelling. 

The  foregoing  exhibits  seem  to  leave  little  room  for  doubt  as  to  the 
desirability  of  reform.  There  is,  however,  one  other  factor  in  the  dis- 
cussion of  such  a  theme.  Let  us  call  it  the  personal  factor.  How  do 
such  statements  affect  the  opinion  or  judgment  of  men  as  individuals  ? 
Who  cares  or  who  has  ever  cared  for,  or  believed  in  the  desirability, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  possibility,  of  an  amended  orthografy  ? 

A  few  years  a^o  130  British  school  boards  presented  a  memorial  to 
the  Education  Department  praying  for  a  Royal  Commission  in  the 
matter;  the  British  Social  Science  Association  past  resolutions  favor- 
ing reform ;  the  Philological  Society  of  England  and  the  American 
Philological  Association,  the  Spelling  Reform  Association,  general  and 
local,  have  been  active  in  the  cause.  In  1875,  Teachers'  Association 


23 

of  Pennsylvania  and  New  Jersey  took  favorable  action.  In  July, 
1877,  the  State  Teachers'  Association  of  New  York  appointed  a  com- 
mittee to  ask  the  Legislature  of  that  State  to  create  a  commission  to 
inquire  into  the  reform,  and  report  how  far  it  may  be  desirable  to 
adopt  amended  spelling  in  the  public  documents  and  direct  its  use  in 
the  public  schools.  The  Ohio  State  Teachers'  Association  also  took 
action  in  favor  of  the  reform.  In  1878,  a  memorial  was  prepared  to 
the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives  of  the  United  States.  This 
was  signed  by  the  president  and  ex-presidents  of  the  Philological  As- 
sociation, and  by  filologists  and  professors  in  about  fifty  of  our  lead- 
ing universities  and  colleges.  The  Department  of  Public  Instruction 
of  the  city  of  Chicago  took  up  the  matter  and  its  Board  of  Educa- 
tion un  ami  no  ii  sly  adapted  a  resolution  :  •'  That  the  secretary  of  this 
board  correspond  with  the  principal  school  boards  and  educational  as- 
sociations of  the  country,  with  a  view  to  cooperation  in  the  reform  of 
English  spelling."  Other  State  teachers'  associations  and  local  societies 
have  been  similarly  emfatic  in  their  expression.  Indeed,  any  list  headed 
by  such  names  as  Muller,  Sayce,  Skeat,  Earle,  Murray,  Morris,  Sweeti 
Whitney,  March,  Child,  Trumbull,  .Haldeman,  Lounsbury ;  and  by 
statesmen,  scientists,  poets,  educators,  such  as  Gladstone,  Sumner, 
Mill,  Lytton,  Tennyson,  Trevelyan,  Thirlwall,  Bain,  Darwin,  Lubock, 
Harris,  Barnard,  constitutes  u  an  authority  "  in  English,  quite  as  re- 
spectable as  the  The  Academy,  in  French.  There  is  no  lack  of  learned 
support;  all  real  authority  is  for  the  reform.  It  is  the  right  thing  to 
do,  but — 

4.  Is  REFORM  FEASIBLE  ? — First,  we  must  remember  that  The  writ- 
ten language  is  not  the  language,  but  merely  a  device  for  recording 
the  language,  quite  within  the  scope  of  the  reformers  as  well  as  the 
first  framers. 

Secondly,  let  us  see  What  has  been  done  mother  languages.  To 
quote  again  from  the  valuable  report  of  Dr.  Gladstone  : 

"  In  the  Italian  and  Spanish  languages  the  spelling  has  already 
been  brought  into  almost  perfect  conformity  with  the  pronunciation. 
In  these,  therefore,  there  is  nothing  to  justify  any  agitation  for  lurther 
reform. 

"  Although  little  fault  can  be  found  with  the  German  spelling  as 
compared  with  the  English  and  French,  the  educationists  of  that  coun- 
try and  the  governments  of  the  different  States  have  long  been  desi- 
rous of  simplifying  it.  In  1854,  meetings  were  held  both  at  Hanover 
and  Leipzig,  which  resulted  in  certain  modifications  of  the  spelling 
being  rendered  obligatory  in  the  Hanoverian  higher  schools.  This 
was  followed  in  1860  by  Wirtemberg,  which  adopted  a  reformed  or- 
thografy  for  its  elementary  as  well  as  its  upper  schools;  and  by  Aus- 
tria in  1861,  and  by  Bavaria  in  1886.  But  the  changes  adopted  by 
these  several  States  are  not  the  same ;  and  so  imminent  did  the  dan- 
ger appear  of  having  a  different  mode  of  writing  and  printing  in  dif- 


24 

ferent  parts  of  Germany,  that  a  conference  of  delegates  from  the  sev- 
eral governments  was  held  at  Dresden  in  October,  1872.  This  led  to 
the  Prussian  Minister  of  Education,  Dr.  Falk,  proposing  that  a  com- 
petent scholar,  Prof,  von  Raumer,  should  draw  up  a  scheme  ;  and  this 
met  with  the  approval  of  all  the  governments.  The  scheme  thus  pre- 
pared was  privately  printed  and  sent  to  the  respective  governments, 
and  then  submitted  to  a  ministerial  commission,  consisting  of  Von 
Raumer  and  eleven  other  educationists,  together  with  a  printer  and  a 
publisher.  The  commission  met  in  January,  1876,  and  approved  of 
the  scheme  with  certain  modifications  ;  and  a  report  of  the  whole  pro- 
ceedings has  been  drawn  up  and  printed."  The  reformed  spelling  is 
now  required  to  be  taught  in  all  the  schools,  and  the  military  cadets 
are  required  to  use  it  in  their  official  correspondence. 

"Up  to  the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  the  spelling  of  the 
D^tch  language  was  very  unsettled.  In  1801,  the  movement  for  re- 
form assumed  a  definit  shape  through  the  essay  of  Prof,  von  Siegen- 
beck ;  and  the  greatly  improved  spelling  that  bears  his  name  was  the 
only  official  and  authorized  one  till  1873.  Then  some  important 
changes  were  proposed  by  De  Vries  and  Te  Winkel,  and  these  are 
now  adopted  by  the  different  departments  of  government.  I  believe 
however,  that  there  are  other  systems  which  receive  official  sanction 
and  we  can  only  hope  that  the  result  will  be  'the  survival  of  the 
fittest.' 

"  Similar  movements  for  reform  are  taking  place  in  the  Scandi- 
navian kingdoms.  The  Swedish  spelling  appears  to  be  about  equal 
in  quality  to  the  German,  but  for  the  last  100  years,  or  thereabouts? 
attempts  have  been  made  by  competent  persons  to  establish  a  purely 
fonetic  system,  and  the  Swedish  Academy  has  adopted  some  of  their 
proposals  and  embodied  them  in  a  model  spelling  book  ;  but  the  gov- 
ernment has  taken  no  part  in  the  matter,  and  there  is  consequently 
much  diversity  in  practice.  In  Denmark,  the  movement  originated 
with  Prof.  Rask  and  some  other  learned  men  and  schoolmasters,  and 
it  has  resulted  in  a  government  decree,  confirming  certain  regulations 
with  respect  to  double  consonants,  the  silent  e  and  d,  the  abolition  of 
<?,  and  some  other  points.  These  '  official '  changes  are  not  obligatory  ; 
but  they  are  winning  their  way  both  in  private  and  public  schools. 
In  July,  1869,  a  meeting  of  scholars  from  Sweden,  Norway  and  Den- 
mark took  place  in  Stockholm,  with  the  object  of  establishing  a  fo- 
netic mode  of  spelling  which  should  be  common  to  the  Scandinavian 
languages." 

And  there  have  been  and  are  other  similar  movements,  among  the 
Slavic  nations  as  well  as  the  Romance-speaking  peoples,  including  the 
French  and  the  Portuguese. 

Thirdly,  What  has  been  done  already  in  our  own  language?  Has 
any  one  dared  to  lay  hands  on  our  fetich  and  lop  off  a  superfluity  or 
restore  a  lost  feature  ? 


25 

The  Anglo  Saxon  spelling  was  fairly  fonetic,  the  chief  defects  being 
the  double  use  of  f,  the  double  use  of  s  and  the  ambiguous  use  of  two 
characters  for  the  two  sounds  of  tJi.  In  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth 
centuries  "  the  English  language  was  practically  respelt  according  to 
the  Anglo-French  method,  by  scribes  who  were  familiar  with  Anglo- 
French;"  thus,  qu  was  substituted  for  cw,  c  for  s  (before  e  and  i). 

It  was  at  this  period  that  Orm,  a  canon  of  the  order  of  St.  Augustine? 
wrote  "The  Ormulum"  (1215),  which  was  a  set  of  religious  services 
in  meter,  spelt  according  to  his  own  scheme.  One  peculiarity  of 
Orm's  method  was  the  doubling  of  the  consonant  after  the  short 
vowel.  Orm,  or  Orminn,  may  be  called  our  first  spelling  reformer, 
and  we  have  to  thank  him  for  preserving  to  us  the  pronunciation  of 
his  day.  In  1554,  John  Hart,  ol  Chester,  England,  wrote  on  "The 
Opening  of  the  unreasonable  writing  of  our  inglish  toung :  wherein  is 
shewed  what  necessarili  is  to  be  left,  and  what  followed  for  the  perfect 
writing  thereof."  This  the  author  followed  up  by  a  publisht  work  in 
1569,  called  "An  Orthographic,  conteyning  the  due  order  and  reason, 
howe  to  write  or  painte  thimage  of  mannes  voice,  most  like  to  the  life 
or  nature,"  The  object  of  this  "is  to  use  as  many  letters  in  our 
writing  as  we  doe  voyces  or  breathes  in  our  speaking,  and  no  more; 
and  never  to  abuse  one  for  another,  and  to  write  as  we  speake."  In 
1568,  Sir  Thomas  Smith,  Secretary  of  State  in  1518,  and  successor  of 
Burleigh,  suggested  an  alfabet  of  34  characters.  This  was  followed,  in 
1580,  by  William  Bullokar's  book  in  black-letter,  proposing  an  alfabet 
of  37  characters.  Then,  too,  we  must  mention  Sir  John  Cheke, 
Chaucer  and  Mill  on.  In  1619,  Dr.  Gill,  head-master  of  St.  Paul's 
school,  publisht  his  "  Logonomia  Anglica,"  advocating  an  alfabet  of 
40  letters.  In  1633,  the  Kev.  Charles  Butler  printed  an  English 
grammar  fonetically.  In  1668,  Bishop  Wilkins  publisht  his  great 
work,  the  "  Essay  towards  a  Real  Character  and  a  Philosophical  Lan- 
guage," in  which  he  gave  the  Lord's  Prayer  and  the  Creed  in  a  fonetic 
alfabet  of  37  letters.  In  1711,  says  Sayce,  "  the  question  of  reforming 
English  spelling  was  once  more  raised,  this  time,  however,  in  a  prac- 
tical direction.  Dean  Swift  appealed  to  the  Prime  Minister  to  appoint 
a  commission  for  the  ascertaining,  correcting  and  improving  of  the 
English  tongue.  His  appeal,  however,  was  without  effect;  and  the 
next  to  apply  himself  to  the  subject  was  Benjamin  Franklin,  who,  in 
1768,  put  forth  "A  Scheme  for  a  New  Alphabet  and  Reformed  Mode 
of  Spelling,  with  Remarks  and  Examples  concerning  the  same,  and  an 
Enquiry  into  its  Uses." 

It  would  seem  that  in  this  hall,  if  anywhere,  a  reform  advocated  by 
Franklin  is  entitled,  even  at  this  late  day,  to  a  fair  hearing  and  an 
intelligent  understanding.  Franklin's  scheme,  tho  in  some  respects 
crude,  has  nevertheless  the  true  ring,  and  is  in  many  details  accurate 
and  scientific.  It  embraces  eight  vowels  and  eighteen  consonants. 
There  are  special  signs  for  a  in  ~ball,  u  in  gum,  sh,  th,  dh,  ng.  He 


26 

considers  that  the  alfabet  should  be  arranged  in  a  more  natural  man- 
ner, beginning  with  the  simple  sounds  formed  by  the  breath  and  with 
no  help,  or  very  little,  of  tongue,  teeth,  and  lips,  but  produced  chiefly 
in  the  wind  pipe.  He  omits  as  unnecessary  c,  q,  x,  u,  y  andey  ;  this 
latter  he  replaces  by  a  special  character  which  is  to  follow  and  modify 
other  consonants;  preceded  by  d  it  produces  j  in  James ;  by  t,  ch  in 
chevy ;  by  z,  the  French  j  in  jamals.  q  has  only  its  hard  sound. 
There  are  no  superfluous  letters,  no  silent  letters.  The  long  vowel  is 
expressed  by  doubling  the  short  one.  There  are  no  diacritical  marks. 
In  general  principles  the  scheme  is  sound.  Had  Franklin  lived  in 
the  filological  light  of  the  present  decade,  he  would  have  been  a 
power  in  the  good  movement.  He  went,  indeed,  so  far  as  to  begin 
the  compilation  of  a  dictionary  and  the  casting  of  the  necessary  new 
types.  The  latter  were  offered  to  Webster  and  declined  by  him  on 
the  ground  of  the  inexpediency  of  employing  new  characters.  This 
was  in  1768  Eight  years  later  he  wrote  to  a  lady  :  "  You  need  not  be 
concerned  in  writing  to  me  about  your  bad  spelling ;  for  in  my  opinion, 
as  our  alfabet  now  stands,  the  bad  spelling,  or  what  is  called  so,  is 
generally  the  best,  as  conforming  to  the  sounds  of  the  letters  and  of 
the  words." 

The  next  great  American  reformer  was  Webster.  It  would  be  out 
of  place  here  to  discuss  Websterianisms.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  Web- 
ster had  a  lasting  influence  upon  our  spelling.  Had  he  been  more  of 
a  scholar  his  influence  would  have  been  vastly  greater  than  it  was. 
The  trouble  was  that  he  tried  to  occupy  both  ends  of  the  see-saw  at 
once.  On  one  end  he  sat  as  etymologist,  on  the  other  as  analogist. 
He  had  "just  enough  of  that  half-learning,"  says  Lounsbury,  "which 
enables  a  man,  when  he  arrives  at  correct  conclusions,  to  give  wrong 
reasons  for  them.  Speaking  of  Webster's  orthografic  changes,  the  same 
writer  well  says  :  "At  best  they  merely  touch  the  surface,  and  then 
only  in  a  few  places.  But  one  effect  they  have  produced.  They  have 
in  some  measure  prevented  us,  and  do  still  prevent  us,  from  falling 
into  the  dead  level  of  an  unreasoning  uniformity.  By  bringing  be- 
fore us  two  methods  of  spelling,  they  keep  open  the  question  of  the 
legitimacy  of  each,  and  expose  to  every  unprejuiced  investigator  the 
utter  shallowness  of  the  argument  that  opposes  change.  Slight  as 
these  alterations  were,  however,  they  met  with  the  bitterest  hostility 
on  their  introduction." 

After  Webster  come  Mitford,  Archdeacon  Hare,  Landor,  Pitman, 
Ellis  and  Thomas,  and  then  the  mighty  host  who  are  leading  the  pres- 
ent Spelling  Reform  movement,  which  includes  nearly  every  eminent 
English  and  American  scholar.  Indeed  every  one  who  consciously, 
prefers  to  spell  parlor,  color,  music,  public,  develop^  deposit,  traveler, 
jeweler,  wagon,  woolen,  quartet,  controller,  ake,  ax,  fantom*  program, 
proves  that  spelling  reform  is  popular,  and  that  the  people  prefer 


27 

sense  to  nonsense,  brevity  to  length,  economy  to  waste,  truth  to  false- 
hood. 

The  many  devices  introduced  into  the  written  speech  during  the 
past  six  centuries,  demonstrate  that  there  is  no  cast-iron  law  of  lan- 
guage to  prevent  other  devices  from  being  introduced  and  accepted 
again. 

Because  the  French  scribes  of  the  twelfth  century  understood  that 
c  before  e  and  i,  was  soft,  they  substituted  k  for  it  when  the  sound  was 
hard.  About  1280  the  rune  uwen"  was  replaced  by  uu,  and  afterward 
by  w.  Accentual  marks  suddenly  disappeared  in  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury. Toward  the  fourteenth  the  rune  "thorn"  was  giving  way  to  the 
use  of  th  and  hw  to  wh — the  latter,  doubtless,  due  to  the  decay  of  the 
guttural  h  leaving  the  sound  of  w  more  prominent.  Indeed,  down  to 
the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century,  h  had  the  force  of  German  ch. 
As  that  decayed  in  sound,  it  was  reinforced  to  the  eye  by  a  c  as  in 
licht,  necht,  or  by  a  g  as  in  though.  The  symbol  oa  disappeared  in  the 
fourteenth,  but  was  revived  in  the  sixteenth  century.  Another 
expedient  of  the  fourteenth  was  to  double  the  final  s  to  show  that  it 
was  not  sonant — M.  E.  glas,  His,  dros,  became  glass,  bliss,  dross' 
Another  device  for  the  same  purpose  was  to  substitute  ce  as  in  mice, 
twice,  originally  mys,  twyes.  Since  Shakespeare,  useless  doubled  con- 
sonants have  given  place  to  a  single  consonant  in  words  like  pitty, 
linnen,  marriner,  widdow,  pallace.  Waggon  is  now  in  transition  to 
wagon.  Duplicate  final  consonants  with  final  e  have  given  place  to 
the  single  consonant,  as  s/iippe,  sonne,  farre.  Useless  final  e  has  been 
dropt,  as  in  cheers,  drinke,  looke,  etc.  Three  new  letters,  j,  w,  v,  have 
been  introduced. 

"About  1630,  in  opposition  to  the  usage  of  all  past  ages,"  says  Dr. 
Murray,  uw  was  made  a  vowel  and  v  a  consonant,  so  that  '  Reuiue  vs, 
saue  vs  from  euil,'  became  '  Revive  us,  save  us  from  evil."  Up  to  that 
time  u  final  was  a  vowel,  but  u  before  a  vowel  was  a  consonant ;  when 
the  consonant  was  written  v  the  following  e  was  no  longer  needed  to 
distinguish  it.  Had  the  reform  gone  a  little  farther  and  dropt  the  e 
after  the  consonant  v  we  should  have  been  spared  many  useless  ap- 
pendages to  words  like  have,  live,  etc. 

In  the  lourteenth  century  the  system  of  doubling  the  vowels  was  re- 
sorted to,  to  indicate  length.  Since  then  ck  has  been  substitute  for  cc 
or  kk,  and  within  memory  the  k  has  been  dropt  in  words  like  music, 
public,  etc. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century  i  was  largely  substituted 
for  y,  so  common  in  Caxton.  "  In  fact,"  says  Skeat,  "  English  abounds 
with  such  fonetic  devices  ;  no  one  objects  to  them  so  long  as  they  are 
allowed  to  remain  sporadic,  irregular,  and  inconsistent." 

Says  Dr.  Murray,  "The  whole  history  of  written  languages  is  the 
record  of  such  gradual  and  partial  reformation.  We  know,  for  in- 
stance, what  was  done  about  1500  by  the  systematic  application  of  ea 


28 

and  ee  to  distinguish  two  sounds  formerly  both  exprest  by  long  e,  and 
the  analogous  adoption  of  oa  and  oo  for  the  two  sounds  of  long  o.  And 
the  slightest  glance  at  the  orthografy  of  Shakespeare,  Bunyan,  or  a 
Bible  of  the  seventeenth  century,  will  show  even  the  most  ignorant, 
what  an  immense  amount  of  spelling  reform  has  been  done  since  then. 
Thus,  to  take  at  random  a  single  instance,  Psalms  106  (foity-eight 
verses),  as  printed  in  1611,  differs  in  116  spellings  from  that  printed 
in  1879,  and  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  as  now  printed,  differs  in  135 
spellings  from  the  same  version  as  printed  in  1611.  One  hundred  and 
thirty-five  differences  in  thirty-one  verses  !  tho  the  same  version  word 
for  word.  Yet  there  are  people —  some  certainly  fools  only,  but  some 
I  fear  knaves — who,  when  spelling  reform  is  mentioned,  shriek, 
4  You  are  going  to  alter  our  language! '  *  *  *  the  fools  not  know- 
ing, and  the  knaves  pretending  not  to  know,  that  the  spelling  in  which 
they  read  these  works  [Milton,  Shakespeare  and  the  Bible]  is  already 
a  greatly  reformed  spelling." 

Finally,  uln  1833,"  says  the  report  of  the  State  Commission,  "  a 
scheme  of  partial  reform  was  jointly  approved  by  the  Philological 
Society  of  England  and  the  American  Philological  Association,  and 
recommended  for  immediate  use.  Those  changes  were  made  in  the 
interest  ot  etymological  and  historical  truth,  and  are  confined  to 
words  which  are  not  much  disguised  for  general  readers.  *  *  * 
Many  propositions  have  been  made  for  adopting  part  of  these 
changes."  *  *  * 

Among  these  is  the  progressive  scheme  used  by  "The  Spelling  Re- 
form Leag,"  as  follows  : 

1.  Use  the  simplified  forms  allowed  by  standard  dictionaries,  as  pro- 

gram, favor,  etc. 

2.  Use  the  two  words  :  tho,  thru. 

3.  Use  the  ten  words  :  tho,  thru,  wisht,  catalog,  definit,  hav,  giv, 

liv,  gard,  ar. 

4.  Use  the  two  rules  :  1.  Use  fforph  sounded  as  /,  as  in  alfabet,  fan- 

torn^  Mosofy,  etc.  2.  Use  t  for  d  or  ed  final  sounded  as  t,  as  in 
fixt,  tipt,  stopt,  clast,  crost,  distrest,  etc. 

5.  Use  the  five  rules:  1  and  2  as  in  4.     3.  Drop  a  from  digraf  ea 

sounded  as  short  e,  as  in  lied,  Jielih,  sted,  etc.  4.  Drop  silent  e 
final  in  a  short  syllable,  as  in  hav,  giv,  liv,  forbad,  reptil,  hostil, 
engin,  iniinit,  opposit,  activ,  etc.  5.  When  a  word  ends  with  a 
double  letter,  omit  the  last,  as  in  eb,  ad,  staf,  stif\-stuf,  eg,  shal, 
wil,  tel,  ^oel,  dul*  lul,  etc. 

6.  Use  the  Twenty-four  Joint  Rules  of  the  American  and  English 

Philological  Associations. 

7.  Use  all  changes  recommended  by  the  Philological  Associations. 
At  a  meeting  of  the  Philological  Society,  April  20, 1883,  it  was  voted 

unanimously  to  omit  certain  of  the  corrections  formerly  recommended, 
so  as  to  bring  about  an  agreement  between  the  two  societies.  The 


29 

following  scheme  of  partial  reform  is  now  jointly  approved  by  the 
Philological  Society,  of  England,  and  the  American  Philological  Asso- 
ciation, and  is  recommended  for  immediate  use : 

1.  e. — Drop  silent  e  when  fonetically  useless,  as  in  live,  vineyard, 

believe,  bronze,  single,  engine,  granite,  eaten,  rained,  etc. 

2.  ea. — Drop  a  from  ea  having  the  sound  of  e,  as  in  feather,  leather, 

jealous,  etc. 

Drop  e  from  ea  having  the  sound  of  a,  as  in  heart,  hearken, 
etc. 

3.  eau. — For  beauty  use  the  old  beuty. 

4.  eo. — Drop  o  from  eo  having  the  sound  of  e,  as  in  jeopardy,  leopard. 

For  yeoman  write  yoman. 

5.  i. — Drop  i  of  parliament. 

6.  o. — For  o  having  the  sound  of  u  in  but,  write  u  in  above  (abuv), 

dozen,  some  (sum),  tongue  (tung)  and  the  like. 
For  women  res  tore  wimen. 

7.  ou. — Drop  o  from  ou  having  the  sound  of  u,  as  in  journal,  nourish, 

trouble,  rough  (ruf),  tough  (tuf),  and  the  like. 

8.  u. — Drop  silent^  after  g  before  a,  and  in  native  English  words, 

as  guarantee,  guard,  guess,  guest,  guild,  guilt,  etc. 

9.  ue. — Drop  final  ue  in  apologue*  catalogue,  etc ;  demagogue,  peda- 

gogue, etc.',  league,   colleague,  harangue,   tongue  (tung), 
etc. 

10.  y. — Spell  rhyme  rime. 

11.  Double  consonants  may  be  simplified  : 

Final  b,  d,  g,  n,  r,  t,  f,  I,  z,  as  in  ebb,  add,  egg,  inn,  purr,  butt, 

bailiff,  dull,  buzz,  etc.  (not  all,  hall). 
Medial  before  another  consonant,  as  battle,  ripple,  written 

(writn),  etc. 
Initial  unaccented  prefixes,  and  other  unaccented  syllables, 

as  in  abbreviate,  accused,  affair,  etc.,  curvetting,  traveller, 

etc. 

12.  b. — Drop  silent  b  in  bomb,  crumb,  debt,  doubt,  dumb,  lamb,  limb, 

numb,  plumb,  subtle,  succumb,  thumb. 

13.  c. — Change  c  back  to  s  in  cinder,  expence,  fierce,  hence,  once, 

pence,  scarce,  since,  source,  thence,  tierce,  whence. 

14.  ch. — Drop  the  h  of  ch  in  cbamomile,  choler,  cholera,  melancholy, 

school,  stomach. 
Change  to  k  in  ache  (ake),  anchor  (anker). 

15.  d. — Change  d  and  ed  final  to  t  when  so  pronounced,  as  in  crossed, 

(crost),  looked  (lookt),  etc.,  unless  the  e  affects  the  pro- 
ceeding sound,  as  in  chafed,  chanced. 

16.  g. — Drop  g  in  feign,  foreign,  sovereign. 

17.  gh. — Drop  h  in  aghast,  burgh,  ghost. 

Drop  gh  in  haughty,  though  (tho),  through  (thru). 


30 

Change  gh  to  f  where  it  has  that  sound,  as  in  cough,  enough, 
laughter,  tough,  etc. 

18.  1. — Drop  I  in  could. 

19.  p. — Drop  p  in  receipt. 

20.  s. — Drop  s  in  aisle,  demesne,  island. 

Change  s  to  z  in  distinctive  words,  as  in  abuse  verb,  house 
verb,  rise  verb,  etc. 

21.  sc. — Drop  c  in  $££/&£,  scythe  (sithe). 

22.  tch. — Drop  £,  as  in  catch,  pitch,  witch,  etc. 

23.  w — Drop  w  in  whole. 

24.  pfc— Write /for  jpA,  as  v&  philosophy ,  sphere,  etc. 

"These  recommendations  are  known  as  the  'Joint  Rules  for 
Amended  Spelling/ or  as  the  'Twenty-four  Rules.'  They  cover  the 
main  points  as  to  which  there  is  substantially  no  further  question 
between  the  two  societies  or  among  reformers  in  sympathy  with 
them.  *  *  * 

u  The  rules  thus  derived  necessarily  differ  in  importance  and  in  the 
extent  of  their  application.  Some  are  very  comprehensive,  some 
affect  only  limited  classes  of  words,  and  some  are  mere  lists  of  words 
to  be  amended.  They  are  arranged  in  the  alfabetical  order  of  the 
letters  omitted  or  changed.  The  rules  proper  may  be  reduced  to  10. 

It  should  be  noted  that  the  rules  do  not  apply  to  proper  names,  or 
to  titles  or  official  designations  like  'Philological  Association,'  or 
4  rhonetic  Journal,'  while  they  may,  nevertheless,  apply  to  the  indi- 
vidual words  which  enter  into  such  designations,  as  Mogical,  fonetic, 
jurnal. 

':  There  are  sufficient  reasons  against  meddling  with  proper  names 
and  titles.  They  may  well  be  left  to  adjust  themselves  to  a  fonetic 
standard  when  such  a  standard  is  establisht  for  common  words. 

"  The  rules  for  amended  spelling  form  a  sequence,  in  which  each 
degree  includes  all  preceding  degrees.  The  Five  Rules  include  the 
Eleven  Words,  and  are  themselves  included  in  the  Twenty-four  Rules. 
The  sequence  is  more  gradually  developt  in  the  seven  steps  of  the 
Leag  pledge,  according  to  which  one  may  start,  or  stop,  at  any  point, 
from  a  simple  preference  for  the  simplified  forms  already  admitted 
by  the  standard  dictionaries,  to  the  adoption  of  all  changes  recom- 
mended by  the  Philological  Associations.  The  several  stages  are  all 
consistent  with  each  other,  and  enable  any  one  who  has  the  spirit  of 
progress  in  him  to  exhibit  that  spirit  in  practical  action,  not  only  free 
from  the  risks  of  individual  preferences  or  caprice,  but  with  the 
knowledge  that  he  is  acting  on  the  advice  and  in  accordance  with  the 
practice  of  scholars  of  the  highest  eminence  in  English  filology." 

The  report  of  the  State  Commission  continues:  "  Without  ventur- 
ing to  recommend  any  of  these,  or  any  orthografic  novelties,  the  com- 
mission would  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  many  words  are  spelt  in 
two  ways  in  our  dictionaries,  and  that  it  is  therefore  necessary  for  a 


31 

choice  to  be  made  between  the  different  spellings.  We  find  'honor' 
and  '  honour,'  '  traveller '  and '  traveler,' ;  comptroller '  and  controller,' 
and  hundreds  of  such  pairs.  In  these  words  one  way  of  spelling  is 
better  than  the  other  on  grounds  of  reason,  simpler,  more  economi- 
cal, more  truthful  to  sound  etymology  and  scientific  law. 

'•The  commission  respectfully  submits  that  the  regulation  of  theor- 
thografy  of  the  public  documents  is  of  sufficient  importance  to  call  for 
legislative  action,  and  that  the  public  printer  be  instructed,  whenever 
variant  spellings  of  a  word  are  found  in  the  current  dictionaries,  to 
use  in  the  public  documents  the  simpler  form  which  accords  with  the 
amended  spelling  recommended  by  the  joint  action  of  the  American 
Philological  Association  and  English  Philological  Society. 

It  is  this  recommendation  of  the  State  Commission  that  is  the  ob- 
jective point  of  our  discussion.  Your  committee  is  unable  to  see  how 
there  can  be  any  difference  of  opinion  upon  the  following  points  of 
the  argument: 

1.  That  the  English  language  is  grossly  misspelt,  and  is  therefore  an 
obstruction  to  the  etymologist ;  a  needless  consumer  of  time,  money 
and  energy  ;  a  falsifier  of  history ;  a  perverter  of  the  logical  and  of 
the  moral  faculty  ;  a  hindrance  to  education  ;  a  chief  cause  of  illiter- 
acy and  a  clog  upon  the  wheels  of  general  progress. 

2.  That  either  a  complete  or  a  partial  reform  is  desirable. 

3.  That  as  partial  reforms  have  been  successfully  wrought  in  the 
past  and  present  centuries  in  English,  and  complete  reforms  in  other 
languages,  it  is  feasible  to  hasten  and  direct  the  still  further  improve- 
ment of  our  so-called  orthografy. 

Your  committee  heartily  believes,  with  Prof.  W.  D.  Whitney,  that 
"  it  is  altogether  natural  and  praiseworthy  that  we  should  be  strongly 
attacht  to  a  time-honored  institution,  in  the  possession  of  which  we 
have  grown  up,  and  which  we  have  learned  to  look  upon  as  a  part  of 
the  subsisting  fabric  of  our  speech ;  it  is  natural  that  we  should  love 
even  its  abuses,  and  should  feel  the  present  inconvenience  to  our- 
selves of  abandoning  it  much  more  keenly  than  any  prospective  ad- 
vantage which  may  result  to  us  or  our  successors  from  such  action ; 
that  we  should  therefore  look  with  jealousy  upon  any  one  who  at- 
tempts to  change  it,  questioning  narrowly  his  right  to  set  himself  up 
as  its  reformer,  and  the  merits  of  the  reform  he  proposes.  But  this 
natural  and  laudable  feeling  becomes  a  mere  blind  prejudice,  and 
justly  open  to  ridicule,  when  it  puts  on  airs,  proclaims  itself  the  de- 
fender of  a  great  principle,  regards  inherited  modes  of  spelling  as  sa- 
cred, and  frowns  upon  the  fonetist  as  one  who  would  fain  mar  the  es- 
sential beauty  and  value  of  the  language." 

But  your  committee  is  also  of  the  opinion  that  a  complete  or  strictly 
fonetic  reform,  however  valuable  it  be  as  an  ideal,  is  as  yet  impracti- 
cable. A  limited  reform  in  the  right  direction,  however,  is  not  only 
practicable,  but  it  has  already  found  a  foothold.  Just  how  far  this 


32 

could  safely  be  attempted  in  the  State  documents  the  committee  is 
not  required  to  say.  But  it  is  certain  that  the  recommendation  of  the 
commission  is  as  safely  conservative  as  any  recommendation  in  the 
direction  of  true  progress  could  be,  and  that  its  adoption  would  be  a 
wise  and  easy  step  toward  uniformity  and  the  simplification  of  English 
orthografy. 

Your  committee  therefore  offers  the  following : 

Resolved,  That  the  regulation  of  the  orthografy  of  the  public  documents  of  this 
State  is  of  sufficient  importance  to  call  for  legislative  action  ;  and  that  this  society  ap- 
proves the  recommendation  of  the  State  Commission  that  the  public  printer  be  in- 
structed, whenever  variant  spellings  of  a  word  are  found  in  the  current  dictionaries, 
to  use  in  the  public  documents  the  simpler  form  which  accords  with  the  amended 
spelling  recommended  by  the  joint  action  of  the  American  Philological  Association 
and  the  English  Philological  Society. 

In  view  of  the  fact  that  the  Legislature  will  probably  not  take  final 
action  upon  the  recommendation  of  the  State  Commission  at  the  pres- 
ent session,  and  as  the  commission  still  desires  the  assistance  of  this 
society,  we  would  respectfully  suggest  that  your  committee  be  con 
tinned  with  permission  to  report  whenever  it  may  seem  desirable. 

PATTERSON  DuBois. 
HENRY  PHILLIPPS,  JR., 
JAMES  MACALISTER. 


33 


APPENDIX  "B." 


Leigh's  System  in  St.  Louis. 


By  Hon.  W.  T.  HARRIS,  Superintendent  in  St.  Louis,  1868-' 81. 

The  irregularities  in  English  orthography  are,  as  is  well  known,  the 
cause  of  a  wide  departure  on  the  part  of  our  elementary  education 
from  what  exists  in  other  countries  where  English  is  not  spoken.  In 
Germany  or  Italy  the  child  can  correctly  spell  any  word  he  hears,  or 
pronounce  any  word  he  sees,  after  he  becomes  familiar  with  the  powers 
of  the  letters  of  his  alphabet.  Hence  the  foreigner  spends  a  very  small 
portion  of  his  time  in  learning  to  spell  his  own  language,  while  if  he 
would  learn  to  spell  our  English  language  correctly,  he  must  give  years 
of  study  to  it.  And  what  is  worst  of  all,  this  study  is  only  an  exercise 
of  the  memory  and  not  a  cultivation  of  the  reason  or  of  the  power  to 
think.  There  are  a  few  general  principles  or  suggestive  analogies  to 
lighten  the  burden.  The  American  child  must  spend  a  large  portion 
of  his  school  days  learning,  one  by  one,  the  peculiar  combinations  of 
the  written  words  of  his  language. 

It  is  found  to  be  a  great  saving  of  time  to  learn  to  read  by  a  phonetic 
alphabet  first,  and  then  change  to  the  ordinary  alphabet  by  degrees. 
The  modified  alphabet  invented  by  Dr.  Edwin  Leigh  has  now  been  in 
use  with  us  many  years  and  still  gives  as  great  satisfaction  as  in  the 
first  years  of  its  adoption.  It  is  desirable  that  the  child  which  is  just 
beginning  his  education  should  have  something  consistent  and  logical, 
methodical  and  philosophical,  to  employ  his  mind  upon,  rather  than 
something  without  either  analogy  or  system ;  for  these  first  impressions 
have  sometimes  the  power  to  change  and  fix  the  whole  bent  of  the 
mind.  Dr.  Leigh's  method  of  teaching  reading  by  a  modified  alpha- 
bet was  introduced  into  the  schools  of  St.  Louis  in  1866.  By  this 
system  the  child  has  an  alphabet  in  which  each  character  represents 
one  sound  uniformly.  Its  only  defect  is  that  it  has  more  than  one 
character  for  the  same  sound.  This  would  be  a  defect  in  a  perfect 
alphabet ;  but  it  is  an  alphabet  designated  merely  as  an  introduction 
and  preparatory  step  for  the  ordinary  spelling ;  it  is  a  great  advantage. 
With  this  modified  alphabet  of  Dr.  Leigh  we  find  the  following  ad- 
vantages. 

1.  Gain  of  time — a  saving  of  one  year  out  of  the  two  years  usually 
occupied  in  learning  to  call  off  easy  words  at  sight. 
3 


34 

2.  Distinct  articulation,  the  removal  of  foreign  accent  and  of  local 
and  peculiar  pronunciations. 

3.  The  development  of  logical  power  of  mind  in  the  pupil.     He 
can  safely  be  taught  to  analyze  a  word  into  its  sounds  and  find  the 
letters  representing  them,  whereas  with  the  ordinary  orthography  it 
is  an  insult  to  his  reason  to  assure  him  that  a  sound  is  represented  by 
any  particular  letter.     Hence  analytical  power  is  trained  by  the  pho- 
netic method,  instead  of  mere  memory,  from  the  day  of  his  entrance 
into  school — and  analytic  power  is  the  basis  of  all  thinking  activity. 

The  logical  inconsistency  of  the  ordinary  alphabet  makes  the  old 
system  a  very  injurious  discipline  for  the  young  mind.  The  earliest 
studies  should  be  the  most  logical  and  consistent.  One  does  not  real- 
ize how  absurd  our  alphabet  is  until  he  finds  that  of  the  six  vowels,  A 
has  8  uses,  E  8,  I  7,  O  12,  U  9,  Y  3,  so  that  the  single  vowels  have  col- 
lectively 47  uses,  giving  an  average  of  7-f  apiece.  Among  the  conso- 
nants, B  has  two  uses  (counting  the  silent  ones),  0  6,  D  4,  F  3,  G  4,  H 
3,  J  5,  K  2,  L  3,  M  3,  JN  3,  P  2,  Q  3,  R  2,  S  5,  T  5,  V  2,  W  2,  X  5,  Y  2, 
Z  4 ;  i.  e..  21  consonants  have  70  uses,  averaging  3^  apiece.  It  is 
easy  to  show  how  many  different  pronunciations  a  word  may  have  by 
permutation.  But  while  there  is  much  difficulty  in  determining  the 
proper  pronunciation  from  the  spelling  it  is  still  more  difficult  to  as- 
certain the  proper  letters  for  the  spoken  word  -from  analogy.  The 
sound  of  E  in  mete  has  no  less  than  40  equivalents  in  the  language,  A 
in  mate  has  34,  A  in  father  2,  A  in  fall  21,  E  in  met  36,  etc.  Thus  it 
happens  that  the  word  scissors  may  be  spelled  58,365,440  different 
ways  and  still  have  analogies  justifj^ingeach  combination.  The  word 
scissors  being  composed  of  six  elementary  sounds,  the  first  one  (S)  is 
represented  in  17  different  ways,  the  second^  36,  the  third  17,  the 
fourth  33,  the  fifth  10,  the  sixth  17;  it  results  that  there  are  17x36x 
17X33X 10 X 17  different  modes  of  spelling  scissors.  (See  A.  J.  Ellis' 
"  Plea  for  Phonetics.") 

The  fact  that  one  is  never  quite  sure  of  the  pronunciation  of  a  new 
printed  word  he  has  never  heard  pronounced,  and  never  quite  sure  of 
the  spelling  of  a  word  he  has  only  heard  pronounced,  and  not  seen  in 
print,  is  sufficient  to  prove  the  illogical  and  capricious-  character  of 
our  orthography.  In  place  of  this  complexity  and  inconsistency,  the 
phonetic  system  substitutes  simplicity  and  consistency.  The  child 
seizes  elements  from  the  start.  Analysis  and  synthesis — the  comple- 
mentary processes  of  the  thinking  activity — are  reached  at  the  begin- 
ning; and  what  the  child  learns  the  first  year  is  now  found  to  place 
him  more  than  a  year  in  advance  of  his  former  status,  for  the  reason 
that  his  quickened  intelligence  has  been  disciplined  to  seize  subjects 
in  a  correct  manner.  With  these  considerations  the  fact  will  not 
seem  strange  that  pupils  who  are  taught  to  read  phonetically  make 
better  arithmetic  and  grammar  scholars  and  are  more  wide  awake  and 


35 

attentive,  have  finer  discriminations — in  short,  are  more  distinguished 
in  those  traits  of  mind  that  flow  from  analytic  training. 

These  views  have  been  presented  in  my  reports  as  superintendent 
of  the  schools  of  St.  Louis.  (See  especially  the  reports  for  1870-71, 
pp.  225,  227,  and  1876-77,  pp.  182-185.)  We  claimed  that  we  saved  a 
year  in  learning  to  read,  and  as  the  same  system  is  still  in  use  in  St. 
Louis  after  twenty  years,  and  the  claim  is  still  made  for  it,  I  consider 
the  question  settled. 

W.  T.  HARRIS. 

COKCORD,  MASS.,  January  26,  1889, 


36 


APPENDIX  C. 


Joint  Rules  for  Amended  Spelling,  Approved  in  1883  by  the  Philological 
Society  of  London  and  the  American  Philological  Association. 

1.  e.       Drop  silent  e  when  fonetically  useless,  as  in  live,  vineyard, 

believe,  bronze,  single,  engine,  granite,  eaten,  rained,  etc. 

2.  ea.     Drop  a  from  ea  having  the  sound  of  e.  as  in  feather,  leather, 

jealous,  etc. 

Drop  e  from  ea  having  the  sound  of  a,  as  in  heart,  hearken, 
etc. 

3.  eau    For  beauty  use  the  old  beuty. 

4.  eo.     Drop   o   from   eo   having   the   sound   of  e,  as  in  jeopardy, 

leopard. 
For  yeoman  write  yoman. 

5.  i.       Drop  i  of  parliament. 

6.  o.       For  o  having  the  sound  of  u  in  but  write  u  in  above  (abuv), 

duzen,  some  (sum),  tongue  (tung),  and  the  like. 
For  women  restore  wimen. 

7.  ou.    Drop  o  from  ou  having  the  sound  of  u,  as  in  journal,  nourish, 

trouble,  rough  (ruf),  tough  (tuf),  and  the  like. 

8.  u.      Drop  silent  u  after  g  before  a,  and  in  nativ  English  words, 

as  guarantee,  guard,  guess,  guest,  guild,  guilt,  etc. 

9.  ue.    Drop   final   ue   in   apologue,    catalogue,    etc.;    demagogue, 

pedagogue,    etc. ;     league,    colleague,    harangue,    tongue 
(tung),  etc. 

10.  y.      Spell  rhyme  rime. 

11.  Double  consonants  may  be  simplified  ;  final  b,  g,  n,  t,  f,  1,  z, 

as  in  ebb,  add,  egg,  inn,  purr,  butt,  bailiff,  dull,  buzz,  etc., 

(not  all,  hall). 
Medial  before  another  consonant,  as  battle,  ripple,  written 

(writn),  etc. 
Initial  unaccented  prefixes,  and  other  unaccented  syllables, 

as  in  abbreviate,  accuse,  affair,  etc.,  survetting,  traveller, 

etc. 

12.  b.       Drop  silent  b  in  bomb,  crumb,  debt,  doubt,  dumb,  numb, 

plumb,  subtle,  succumb,  thumb. 

13.  c.       Change  c  back  to  s  in  cinder,  expence,  fierce,   hence,  once, 

pence,  scarce,  since,  source,  thence,  tierce,  whence. 

14.  ch.    Drop   the   h  of  ch  in    chamomile,  choler,   cholera,  melan- 

choly, school,  stomach. 
Change  to  k  in  ache  (akej,  anchor  (anker). 


37 

15.  d.      Change  d  and  ed  final  to  t  when  so  pronounced,  as  in  crossed, 

(crost),  looked  (lookt),  etc.,  unless  the  e  affects  the  pre- 
ceding sound,  as  in  chased,  chanced. 

16.  g.      Drop  g  in  feign,  foreign,  sovereign. 

17.  gh.    Drop  h  in  aghast,  burgh,  ghost. 

Drop  gh  in  haughty,  though  (tho),  through  (thru). 
Change    gh    to    f  where    it   has   that  sound,  as  in  cough, 
enough,  laughter,  tough,  etc. 

18.  1.       Drop  1  in  could. 

19.  p.      Drop  p  in  receipt. 

20.  s.       Drop  s  in  aisle,  demesne,  island. 

Change  s  to  z  in  distinctive  words  as  in  abuse  verb,  house 
verb,  rise  verb,  etc. 

21.  sc.     Drop  c  in  scent,  scythe  (sithe). 

22.  tch.  Drop  t  as  in  catch,  pitch,  witch,  etc. 

23.  w.      Drop  w  in  whole. 

24.  ph.   Write  f  for  ph,  as  in  philosophy,  sphere,  etc. 

An  alphabetical  list  of  words  amended  according  to  the  above 
rules  is  to  be  found  in  the  Transactions  of  the  American  Philological 
Association  for  1886. 

Reform  by  Progressive  Steps. 
SPELLING  REFORM  LEAGUE. 

I  hereby  giv  my  name  to  be  used  in  the  list  of  advocates  of  spelling 
reform,  and  agree  to  adopt  for  general  use  the  simplified  spellings  indi- 
cated by  the  number  following  my  signature.  The  numbers  signify  : 
Iwil— 

1.  Use  the  simplified  forms  allowed  by  standard   dictionaries,  as 
program,  favor,  etc. 

2.  Use  the  two  words  :  tho,  thru. 

3.  Use  the  ten  words  :  tho,  thru,  wisht,  catalog,  definit,  hav, 
giv,  liv,  gard,  ar. 

4.  Use  the  two  rules:  1.  Use  f  for  ph  sounded  as  f,  as  in  alfatiet. 
fantom,  Mosofy,  etc.     2.  Use  t  for  d  or  ed  final  sounded  as  t,  as  in  fixt, 
tipt,  stopt,  clast,  crost,  distrest,  etc. 

5.  Use  the  Five  Rules ;  1  and  2  as  in  4.     3.  Drop  a  from  digraf  ea 
sounded  as  short  e,  as  in  hed,  helth,  sted,  etc.     4.  Drop  silent  e  final 
in  a  short  syllable,  as  in  hav.  giv,  liv,  forbad,  reptil,  hostil,  engin, 
infinit,  opposit,  activ,  etc.     5.  When  a  word  ends  with  a  double  letter, 
omit  the  last,  as  in  eb,  ad,  staf*   stif,  stuf,  eg,  shal*  wil,  tel,  wel*  dul, 
lul,  etc. 

6.  Use  the  24  joint  rules  of  the  American  and  English  Philologi- 
cal Associations. 

7.  Use  all  changes  recommended  by  the  Philological  Associations. 


14  DAY  USE 

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